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No More Healers

I don’t have much time for blogging this half of the week, but there is a nice fundamentals-article at Guild Wars 2 about death and healing.  They will be using a Borderlands style near-death status where players will be weakened when down on the ground in appropriately named Downed Mode, but if they can kill off an enemy in time they stand back up with renewed vigor.  Alternatively, allies can help the player back up to her feet.  “Death,” which happens after failing at Downed Mode can still be countered on the battlefield with rez skills.  Otherwise the death penalty is going to be gold to pay the warp fee to go to the nearest known waypoint.  It’s going to be really interesting to see how players act in a large herd when an unpartied ally goes down.

The other bit is on the replacement of the “holy trinity” with focus on Damage, Support, and Control.  I think their main goal in this vernacular gymnastics is to get away from all the prejudice involved with Tank-Heal-DPS roles.  For starters there will be no healer class.  The monk is dead.  Thank you, ArenaNet.  It only took 6 years for you guys to listen to me.  I kid, a little… instead the “holy trinity” becomes inherent to each profession.  I love utility classes that respond to the battlefield instead of having a set role the whole time.  My favorite class in an MMO, the Captain in Lord of the Rings Online can do Damage, Support, and Control.  The problem is he can’t fill the role of any one of them to the degree that is sometimes required.  The Captain’s “balance” is in the fact that, for example, when he helps Support, the Minstrel can focus a little more on Damage.

At Kotaku, ArenaNet dev favorite Izzy says:

“All the healing that happens in the game – the main meat of healing is your personal heal skill. You are in charge of your health. Other people can help you and support you say by pulling a creature off of you, or provide minor healing, but nothing as effective as you do yourself. “
It’s interesting that they are taking the risk v. reward away from groups, and putting it back on the player.  If the player goes agro/DPS crazy then they may very well pay the consequences.  It’s on them instead of forcing a healer to “do better.”  With only two official classes, Elementalist and Warrior, and two unofficial classes, Necromancer and Ranger, out of the 8 total, it’s still hard to get a clear picture of how this will all work.  Hopefully the flow and feel of the game will be a lot more apparent in just over a month when fans play Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom and PAX.

–Ravious
if challenge had a taste, you’d be quite delicious

The ESRB certifies anyone these days…

Some gems from Blizzard’s privacy policy, as certified by the ESRB:

“Blizzard Entertainment and its affiliate companies (collectively “Blizzard”) respect the privacy of its on-line visitors and recognize the importance of providing a secure environment for them.”

Great start. We’re off to a good one.

“Blizzard Entertainment adheres to the Safe Harbor Principles that were established by the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission to comply with the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection that went into effect in October 1998.”

Not really. at the very least, once the proposed changes go live, I imagine Blizzard would be breaching the third Principle: “Onward Transfer – Transfers of data to third parties may only occur to other organizations that follow adequate data protection principles.”. IANAL, though. You can read about the Principles here.

It gets better.

Continue reading The ESRB certifies anyone these days…

Viricide

It is a rare event when my wife says that I really ought to blog about a flash game.

The gameplay in Viricide is pretty standard: shoot the enemies that come on-screen, collect bits to buy upgrades. You get more toys and a better ship over time, while the enemies get more diverse. Good, and you have probably played something similar before.

The level introductions are what sell it. You are killing bugs in a computer. You fix its systems, and it talks to you. The humor starts with displays of the problems you are fixing, such as excessive enthusiasm or explaining the obvious. It visits a less friendly computer. You then go into the background story, which could be successful or not; I expect that people rejecting the emotional manipulation will find another layer of humor in it.

: Zubon

Elements

Where Duels of the Planeswalkers failed to scratch that itch, I am finding Elements surprisingly engaging. It has many options but a shallow learning curve, making gameplay simple but diverse.

Elements is an online collectible card game. It is free, although they accept donations. You get new cards by winning matches in-game or by using the in-game currency (“electrum”), which is also gained by winning matches. A daily “Oracle” also offers a bit of cash, chance of a rare card, and a buff for 1 PvE match.

If you have played Magic, you know the basic structure. Elements has 12 colors of mana (“quanta”) and is heavily creature-focused with limited deck or gameplay manipulation and no counter-spelling. You can play against other players or several tiers of computer opponents, the top two tiers gaining advantages that are substantial and ridiculous respectively. You build up your stock of cards, design the deck you want to play with, and fight at the difficulty you choose.

Continue reading Elements

…Was This T-Shirt

The subject of this post is a part of a well-known joke, as much as one can call a bloody, mush of hamburger on the ground in the barest form of a beaten horse a joke.  The joke goes that vacationers go to paradise and bring back as a small token of affection a gift to the chumps left behind in the form of a t-shirt emblazoned with “My parents / kids / ex-friends / I went to [paradise] and all I got was this t-shirt.”  Transcending the joke, the t-shirt acts as an achievement notification to others.  Clearly, someone went to the place on the t-shirt, and now the foreign object is being worn for all to see.  MMOs have a similar article in the form of exclusive appearance items.

Continue reading …Was This T-Shirt

Multiplayer Conundrum

I occasionally post comments here on non-MMOs that have single- and multi-player options. I usually comment after the single-player experience. Someone invariably comments that I am not giving the game a fair trial unless I try the online multi-player. The games for which I do try the online multi-player, the other players are so horrible (as humans, not as skilled players, although sometimes both) that I refuse to play the game long enough to give it a fair shot. There need not even be many troublemakers: the perfect game to grief is one with few enough players that your impact is felt but too many to organize a kicking/banning, and bring a friend to become immune to most attempts to eliminate you.

The next comment, then, is that playing with a random online community is not giving it a fair shot. You need to have a guild/clan/whatever, be active on this message board with good people, visit this site, etc. Basically, bring your own community with you, sometimes for both teammates and opponents. Beyond the time investment that demands for a game (some of these “fair shot” multi-player conditions take longer to set-up than it does to play through the whole single-player game), once I am at the point of already playing with my known group of friends, it no longer matters much what we’re playing. The game is not contributing much at that point; I have done all the heavy lifting out-of-game by bringing the group. All we ask from the game at that point is not to be so horribly flawed that it ruins our time together. We’ve all tried things that horrible.

Basically, my ears are still ringing from someone’s mic spam while trying to find the mute command on a new game (as far as I can tell, it depends on “kick teammate” rather than having a mute), and I am feeling kindly towards those games that severely limit your in-game communications options. Limiting player interaction impairs a basic function of your game, but it prevents random people from actively making your game a worse place to be.

: Zubon

Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon – Excerpt

You can read an excerpt from the upcoming “Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon” book by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb here. Small excerpt of the excerpt here:

The sylvari set her chin and concentrated on a patch of the bones lining the left side of the passage. She swung her arms and fingers in a complex pattern and spoke words that made Dougal’s head ache slightly. A greenish glow formed in the wall of bones and coalesced around a human-sized set of remains.

As Dougal watched, the bones detached from the surrounding patch and assembled themselves into a coherent skeleton. The deep-green glow, rather than sinew and tendons, held it together. The right side of its skull had been bashed in, and its jaw was missing, as was the lower part of its right arm, which terminated in a pair of jagged breaks. It stood before them like a servant presenting itself to its betters.

– Ethic

The Black Norn

There has been an interesting thread over at Guild Wars 2 Guru on whether we will be able to play as a dark-skinned norn in Guild Wars 2.  The norn race in Guild Wars 1 were introduced in the Eye of the North expansion as being a race of giant humanoids living in the Far Shiverpeak mountains.  They were based off a real world Norse-type mythology with a splash of Celtic tattoos.  Now, in Guild Wars 2, which is 250 years later could there be non-light skinned norn?  I am not talking about norns with rockin’ beach tans.  I mean has their melanin caught up with the climates some may live in?

My unofficial answer: the shift-eyed asura already have ways to recombobulate DNA and shift for humans in the time of Guild Wars 1.  No reason a fair-skinned norn would not want to hire the Anatomical Engineer’s services because he is sick of being sunburned.  I know where I would get my inspiration for a black norn.  But, this is all kind of shirking the big issue.  Should character-based online games allow players of any skin color to replicate their skin (and hair!) color in game for any race (and by race we really mean species)? 

Continue reading The Black Norn