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.
.It’s interesting how we want to be brief. The end of Season 1 has occurred, and it’s a time for reflection. The story of Scarlet is mostly finished, but far from complete. I have my theories, even in the face of the amazing final cut scene.
What I feel like most is at the end of a LOST season. I am not sure what to think or where we are going. I just know I want more. I think more will come tomorrow, but I am still digesting it all.
–Ravious
The Village trap is the opposite of Big Money. It is the tendency to buy too many actions, to hope for big but unlikely combos, and to look for the awesome instead of the effective.
Did you know that there is a five-card combo that will win the game in one turn? Do you want to guess the odds of buying, drawing, and playing that combo before someone else wins the game?
Continue reading [TT] Dominion: The Village Trap
The latest update to Dawn of the Dragons is the sort of straight-up slot machine that one expects from F2P games of its like, surprising only in the relative rarity of that sort of thing in this particular game. I mean, they advertise the “expedition” packs with random loot tables for real money currency, but the festival “vortex” is a blind draw from an unknown table, the “fortune teller” is the same for buffs, and the “gambit” is a literal raffle. Adding a “Winner’s Board” to show off the better prizes is a nice touch.
And then there’s this guy. The new Event Raid is a literal loot piñata. For some reason, that just tickles me.
: Zubon
While not as catchy as Zubon’s Tabletop Tuesday, I will admit it took me half a cup of coffee to forsake Tabletop [RPG] Thursday and get another mildly catchy title. I’ve noticed that a lot of MMO players, especially bloggers, at least understand the concept of pen-and-paper role-playing games (RPGs). I know a lot of us also frequent the fabled rpg.net, which is the hub for that niche of geek. So to get more posts on KTR, I’m going to branch out on Thursdays to write about pen-and-paper or tabletop RPGs.
Let’s start with the granddaddy of RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Or rather, let’s not. Tobold has been talking about D&D Next for awhile, and I’d rather talk about something we have. Let’s talk about the children of D&D 3.5. Continue reading Welcome to RPG Ravings [RR]
Unless challenged to think otherwise, people quickly move from “Phew! Dodged a bullet on that one!” to “I’m a great bullet-dodger.”
— Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
This is not restricted to gaming, but I notice a lot of gamers are unaware when they are fortunate and instead believe that they are highly skilled. Wait, no, these are gamers, so they instead believe that other people suck because they got a worse roll of the dice. Consider the question of how difficult content is.
Continue reading Dodging Bullets
Big Money is the benchmark strategy for Dominion. Understanding that means you are no longer a newbie. Big Money is the baseline against which all other strategies are measured. Big Money is also very dull, and moving away from it has been one of the more important design goals of Dominion’s expansions.
Big Money is a simple strategy: unless you can buy a Province, buy a Gold or a Silver. That’s it. Continue reading [TT] Dominion: Big Money
If I started referring to the city as “Lion’s Arwic,” would many people get that reference?
: Zubon
Years ago, I pondered reducing quantity as a means of avoiding raising price. I will avoid repeating the examples, since the link is right there.
In our present games, quantity is reduced via moving content to expansion packs and DLC. Players notice when you increase the average cost of a game from $40 to $50 to $60, and at some point it becomes hard to make that next jump, especially if you need to be the first company making that jump. So put less in the box. Heck, that’s even good publicity because you are now releasing an expansion pack sooner, and more expansion packs. You’re putting out so many updates, you’re selling something called a “season pass” for all that DLC. So what if the amount of non-procedural content in sequel+DLC is less than the original game? How many reviewers rate the game based on that?
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It does cost money to make games, and costs do increase over time. At some point, either the base game costs $80, or you are buying that same amount of content in a $40 with two $20 expansions. It doesn’t matter that you used to be able to get that much game for $40, any more than it matters that you used to go watch a double-feature at the cinema for a quarter. Costs rise, and this is one way that customers have chosen to absorb them. I say “customers have chosen” because the company would be perfectly happy to take your $80 up front with one release date, but it turns out that more players will give them more money if they sell it in smaller pieces. You get the game business models you are willing to pay for.
There are some obvious ways we benefit from that as players. If you have exit points at $40 and $60, you can decide that you don’t like the direction the game is going; if you pay $80 up front, you’ve already paid your $80. You are also getting that first $40 worth of game sooner, and given the popularity of playing beta and early release games, that seems to be an in-demand option. Each part of the game needs to justify itself as being worthwhile, rather than just getting one score for the whole game and hoping the reviewers forgive some problems in the third act.
There are some obvious drawbacks in terms of game design as well. Insert your favorite twenty stories about perverse game monetization strategies. Having that spread of DLC and expansions can fracture the playerbase and promote “pay to win” via power creep. Hey, if you need a way to sell that third expansion, how about “you’ll be more powerful if you buy it”?
Like most design and business decisions, this can be done well or badly. I would just like us to be more conscious of it and buy games for value and quality design, rather than letting our primate brains react to big numbers on the screen. But we’re gamers, and we react to big numbers on the screen.
: Zubon
ArenaNet might have finally found their stride with the Living World by destroying the community jewel of Lion’s Arch. In its place is a pretty intense hour-long event that is shaping the economy. This update is forceful, and I am really enjoying the more heavy-handed approach to shaping Guild Wars 2.
Ideals about ‘Fugees
The main event is about an hour-long event to evacuate Lion’s Arch. At the start of each hour there is a short event to gate three entrances to Lion’s Arch. It’s a short blitz, and then the gates are open. Players rush in to see absolute destruction of Lion’s Arch (see Jeromai and Bhagpuss’s photoblogs). The goal is to save citizens, kind of. Another goal is stop Scarlet’s armies from salting the earth with miasma.
The score shown to the right is saved citizens. At certain levels, like 100, 300 and 600, all players on the map get a treasure bag. Supposedly at higher levels there are better treasure bags. I don’t know, I haven’t been there yet. Continue reading [GW2] NGOs and Refugees in Lion’s Arch
This apparently happened just before I downloaded Plants vs. Zombies 2. For those not clicking links: a recent update started charging 2,000 coins per lawnmower. Customer complaints were sufficiently loud to reverse that decision.
Just after my previous post, I encountered my first pinata party in PvZ2. Due to perverse randomization in the plants I was given, my party was impossible and ended in less than thirty seconds. If I would like to try another roll of the dice, it will cost 1,000 coins.
: Zubon