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Gloom and Radiance, Dread and Hope

Checking those patch notes, the Dread system is being revised again. I think of it as something that has never worked well, but is again one of those features that someone thinks needs to be made to work. Suzina addressed the issue a few months ago, but the system gets another wrinkle in the expansion. So here we go. Ready?

Gloom and Radiance are now subsets within Dread and Hope. Radiance has no purpose except to counter Gloom. (For the non-LotRO players, this is what we mean by “Radiance-gating”: recent content has thrown massive amounts of Gloom at the players to force them to get Radiance gear to be able to visit those areas.) Un-countered Gloom converts to Dread, which can be countered only by Hope. You can also have Dread independently, which again demands Hope. Radiance gives no benefit beyond countering Gloom, but Hope will continue to give the bonuses that Radiance/Hope did before.

And what does all this do? Suzina’s post has the specifics. Having up to 5 Hope (or, formerly, 50 Radiance) gives you some small bonuses to health and damage. Having any un-countered Dread gives you massive debuffs: small debuffs for inbound damage and healing, moderate debuffs to the damage you deal, large debuffs to your health cap, and then some effective level-lowering starting at moderate Dread. And then you start cowering (effectively stunned) at high levels of Dread.

Major effects of separating Radiance and Hope: Moria Radiance gear no longer gives bonuses in most fights and no longer counters Dread from dying. Encounters that give Gloom are largely unchanged, and Gloom itself seems toned down a bit. Encounters that give Dread are relatively harder, as there is only so much Hope available. Dying in raid fights with Dread is now really really bad, but Minstrels now get group rez sickness clearing. Raid Radiance gating has fewer effects on the rest of the game.

: Zubon

Siege of Mirkwood – Official Notes

The release notes are even longer than they look because they pass some work to the developer diaries, notably the seven-part series on skirmishes. You may also want to review or print the five-page known issues list, which is noted as being not all-inclusive.

: Zubon

Update: in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ (although not perhaps Tolkien), something for you to watch while you download. There are two similar videos. HT to Woot.

Bug Report: Hall of Mirrors

If you are going to encourage everyone to run through a central Epic quest line, it is important for that line not to be left in a horribly bugged state for months. I know there is the big expansion tomorrow, but if Book 8 does not work, why should I care about Book 9?

My first visit to the Hall of Mirrors had a group problem. Hall of Mirrors depends on clearing corruptions, and we had two Hunters and a DPS-traited Loremaster (no crowd control) who either could not or would not remove corruptions. Hunters cannot remove corruptions on enemies with more than half health. The corruption in question gives a massive AE HoT. You can see why we never got through that. Hey, thanks for making corruption-removal essential and then ensuring that my class cannot do it. Hunters get the bonus of being able to remove three corruptions at once when they finally can, at the cost of most of their focus, which I have found useful perhaps twice in all of Moria. Very few enemies stack corruptions. This is not strictly about Hall of Mirrors, just a game design failure that becomes important there.

I visited this weekend, and the second boss-type encounter (Morroval Task-Mistress) failed in three different ways. The first was probably our fault: the fight started before we were all in the room. Continue reading Bug Report: Hall of Mirrors

Duty to Tweet

In our continuing, sporadic monitoring of Web 2.0, we note a news story with Eugene Volokh’s comments on an arrest for failure to Tweet.

“We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” [Det. Lt.] Smith said. “By not cooperating with us we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

I must confess that I too, having no Twitter account, did nothing to stop the problem. I apologize to anyone who has been damaged by my lack of 140-character updates. Ethic, however, is Tweeting.

: Zubon

Content Managers

While I am enthusiastic about consumer choice, I am displeased with the number of competing game management programs out there and their assorted exclusive deals with various games. I am not quite to the point at which I will skip buying a game because it is not available through a given distribution network, but I am tempted, especially when some have online multi-player only through some other service, which may not be the one I used to buy it. I don’t need more log-ins, and I don’t need more networks sending me e-mails and pop-ups to suggest buying more things from them.

As our cell phone using outside the US know, interoperability is not a strong point here. We finally have it with most instant messaging and text services. Come on, team, let’s get our game networks linked up.

: Zubon

Updating Best Practices

Comments on the other post reminded me of how patching can be done well: City of Heroes, yet again leading the industry from five years ago. Patches pre-load, with this being an automatic option when you log off in the week before a major patch. This does not help much if you are returning to see the new stuff, but current players have it pre-loaded. (Again, yay for Steam for doing that on upcoming releases.) That frees up bandwidth for those returning players.

Note two different parts: automatically updating without more clicks, and it does this as an option when you log off. It does not keep you from playing right now, which is what we all want. I believe the PlayNC updater will do something similar to what I like with Steam’s automatic updates, but I do not keep it running because I rarely have multiple NCSoft games active at once.

: Zubon

One-Click Update

Auto-update is a wonderful feature for content management systems. Steam will update my games while I am not paying attention. Several other producers have similar updaters. These are great. If I need to plan ahead or budget time, I am less likely to play. PC games will benefit to the extent that they resemble console games: push the button and it works.

An absolutely necessary feature is that the game can update itself without my babysitting it. Give me an “Update now?” button and otherwise leave me alone. If I need to manually re-start the program several times, I am going to get bored and wander off half-way through; that other company over there has games that work when I click them, and I only have so much time to wait today.

The worst version of this comes from games that update patches successively, instead of automatically bringing you to the latest edition. As they say on the internet, FAIL. Update, apply, update, apply, update, apply… This can be acceptable if it is one-click, so I can let it run when I go to bed. This will not be acceptable if it goes through a lengthy version of that when I want to play.

The worst offender I have seen is a game still in beta. I appreciate that they have frequent updates, but it updates one patch at a time, and each needs me to click, “Yes, download”; “Yes, install”; “Yes, finish.” It might also ask me to manually re-start the game after each “finish,” but I don’t remember because I stopped thinking about those clicks one day when I tried to get through about 10 patches. I have spent far more time downloading and updating that game than playing, and if just getting the game on my computer is that tedious, my hopes for the game itself are low. I understand that different guys program different things, so one system does not reflect another, but if your game is already not fun before I even play, that is a bad sign in the same way that a lousy, non-skippable tutorial is.

: Zubon

Psychology to the rescue

Here’s a simple solution to curb the inevitable overpopulation of Jedi characters in SW:TOR. We’re already expanding on the lore as it is with those weird new classes, so what’s one more spot on the leopard anyway? Just add this bit:

“The venerable Jedi knights search far and wide throughout the galaxy in a constant search for force-sensitive individuals. Those with the ability are brought in to be tutored and trained in the ways of the force, and are able to wield impressive powers that put them above most other living beings in the galaxy. Training, however, is grueling and in order to safeguard the purity of the force and keep their numbers manageable, all new Jedi initiates undergo a cleansing ritual in which their testicles are removed.”

Let’s see how many go for that once it’s made canon.