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.In Marvel Puzzle Quest again, the upcoming rebalancing was announced in-game, alerting people that Thor and Wolverine would be nerfed (“funbalanced”). The next day, the developers released the PvP tournament of the week, in which Thor is given a power boost. The PvE event of the weekend gives that same boost to Wolverine.
: Zubon
Where does Scarlet get all this stuff? I’m hoping that floating platform is a standard Asuran technology bit, otherwise she just invented orbital platforms. But mostly, the metal. Scarlet’s driving prices for crafting materials on the trading post, isn’t she?
: Zubon
Yesterday was a rollercoaster of emotion in playing the Origins of Madness update in Guild Wars 2. There was good; there was bad. There were shouts of joy and tears of rage. And, it all happened on the hour. Every hour.
The basis of the update are a Tequatl-difficulty wurm battle, a less difficult Marionette battle, a story instance, and a secret lair instance. The two battles happen on rotating hours (Wurm = odd server hour, Marionette = even server hour), and the two instances are player invoked. I’ll run down the line.
Triple Threat
The wurm battle, Triple Threat, is… good. It’s bad for a pick-up player filled Living World, but I feel that it is a fine accompaniment to Tequatl and dedicated guild/commanders heading forward on these challenges. The map needs to split up into three equal parts, escort one snappy Asuran triplet to the wurm site, and take down their wurm. The wurms are invulnerable until a burn phase, and each has a different mechanic to opening it. Crimson is easiest, Cobalt is just a tad harder, and Amber is going to be the hellgate. Continue reading [GW2] Welcome Back Wurm Juice
Human beings are surprisingly poor at estimating how happy something would make us. It turns out that your long-term happiness is largely fixed and resilient to shocks. Winning the lottery or losing a limb does affect your happiness, but not nearly as much as you might expect.
A major problem in estimating a change in happiness is that we are envisioning the moment of the change itself, rather than the average change over time. A cookie makes you happy right now, but that effect goes away within the hour. Losing a limb makes you unhappy right now, but that effect also usually fades over time (more than an hour).
In-game, you are envisioning the moment you get a really great drop. That is a really great moment, winning a small lottery. But how much happiness does that bring you over time? Moving up to “best in slot” is often a tiny percentage improvement. You need quite a few of those best-in-slot drops for the effect to be noticeable, and what you envision there is the item grind.
Or maybe gameplay will become too easy after that, so your great moments create an average decrease over time. Remember, you’re surprisingly poor at estimating what makes you happy. Don’t worry, that effect also fades over time as the new best-in-slot gear is added, at which point you can start pursuing that.
: Zubon
My attitude towards questions in general chat is a mix of sympathy and scorn. I see where Endgame Viable is coming from, because people ask some fundamentally stupid and lazy questions, ones where the answer was probably already on-screen but they clicked past it instead of reading (or asking that exact “endgame viable” question in a newbie zone). I am also the veteran of a dozen MMOs where broken quests were the norm rather than the exception, so it seems reasonable to ask whether you have the right answer. I suppose my dividing line is between “is this the right answer?” and “what is the right answer?”
I just played Anna – Extended Edition. (Quick review: creepy atmosphere, nice story breadcrumbs, some interface dodginess.) It has some of the classic adventure game insanity I described in the linked post and Old Man Murray described in the post linked therein. It matters which of several bladed objects you use to cut particular objects, and essential items are hidden in drawers (but some desks’ drawers are purely decorative and cannot be opened). I am pretty sure this is a game where the atmosphere is the point more than the game itself, and I felt only the most minimal shame in having a walkthrough open on my second monitor. While the point of a puzzle game is to solve the puzzle, I do not feel lessened because I did not guess I was supposed to find baby hair in an object in one of the cribs, nor that I did not independently guess which dark brown rectangles on one of fifteen shadowy shelves per room was a book.
In MMOs, the social aspect of the game is supposed to be part of the game. If content is meant to be puzzled out on your own, not in cooperation with others, it pretty much needs a big sign over it saying, “Go in unspoiled!” because our default is to collaborate. You could solo the scavenger hunt, or you could work with your friends. And with 100,000 “friends” playing, at least 100 of whom will update a wiki or post a comment, it seems little wonder that people expect the guide to be written for them.
I am all for asking for a nudge, direction, or confirmation in general chat. I think my wife gets a better puzzle game experience than I do because I either force my way through it or Google the help, while she has someone in the room she can ask, “Am I doing this wrong, or am I doing the wrong thing?” I wish we had a better way of teaching new players to ask that question rather than “tell me how to do it.” Whatever your thoughts about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish, “can you fish in rivers or just lakes?” seems like a fair question.
: Zubon
EVE Online and meatspace violence are examples of negative sum PvP. The stakes are what people bring into the competition, some of those stakes will be destroyed in the competition, and what the winner gains is equal to or less than what the loser lost. (Meatspace political lobbying is negative sum PvP for society as a whole.)
Tournament standings and poker are examples of zero sum PvP. There is a fixed pool of stakes, and your gain is exactly equal to someone else’s loss. Most status games (explicit or not) are zero sum, with status as a relative good such that one can only rise by displacing another. (The tournament itself can be a gain for competitors, but the fixed nature of the prize pools makes the competitive elements zero-sum. For me to get the first place prize, I must prevent someone else from getting it.) (Poker with a rake is negative sum for the players.)
Games are increasingly fond of positive sum PvP. Everyone fights, everyone gets a prize, everyone comes out ahead. In League of Legends, everyone gets influence (and winners get more). In Guild Wars 2 sPvP, there are no permanent costs, and everyone gains glory, rank progress, and achievement progress (and winners get more). (Meatspace economic competition is positive sum PvP for society as a whole, where winners are decided by producing greater value for less cost rather than by political lobbying.)
In all of these cases, we tend to discount or ignore the time spent. If you enjoy the game, spending time is not much of a cost, anyway. Time spent being entertained is the benefit, not the cost, although the time spent in-game almost certainly has a higher earnings potential than the cash value of the in-game benefit you gain, although you can potentially profit by poker. (In meatspace, the time spent may be the most important thing.)
Marvel Puzzle Quest tournaments use a mix of positive and zero sum systems. When you defeat an opponent, you gain points, usually more than they lose for losing. Those points add up to benefits (positive sum). There is also a ranked tournament structure with a fixed prize pool, where advancing necessarily displaces someone else (zero sum). Because you can spend in-game resources in the tournaments, the tourney competitions can become negative sum, although given rewards per win, you would need to be burning it fast, which can happen in the fight for first place.
: Zubon
The fact that I am explicitly not giving you information gives you information.
In drafting a post, I wanted to avoid spoiling something, one of those cases when you want to recommend something without saying why so that someone can experience the rare joy of having all the surprises. “Just go watch/play/read it. It’s that good, and I don’t want to spoil anything for you.”
But now you know there is something to be spoiled. If it were a mystery, and I said I did not want to spoil the ending for you, that would not be new information; you expect there to be a big reveal at the end. If it is an action movie, and I tell you I want to avoid spoiling the ending, that immediately tells me the ending is not “the hero kills the bad guy, gets the girl, and saves his child.” If I tell you I cannot tell you anything about it at all, that tells you it will be a deconstruction, mind screw, or otherwise filled with twists and not what it seems. The content of the surprise can still be a surprise, but knowing that a surprise is coming makes it less surprising, and your suspicious mind starts looking for clues that might have passed you by if you were not primed to expect a twist.
At some point, it becomes fair game. If you do not know about Rosebud or Luke’s father, sorry, those are public information. By now, you know that Bioshock and Portal have big surprises at their midpoints, even if you do not know what those are (and you probably know).
But how do you protect the secret without revealing the fact of the secret, other than just lying about it?
: Zubon
Playing through A Dark Room, I was distressed upon the realization that the resource-gathering portion of the game was an idle game. I went in completely unspoiled, but that is the kind of thing you need to warn someone about. You should also warn them of the scale of idling expected. There is a big difference between games with a few hours of idling built in and a few weeks (or potentially endless).
I am often amused by idle games but I find them insufficiently interactive. That is kind of the point of them, but I do things with my computer. My idea of quality gaming does not involve starting up a game and going to bed. I also need there to be a gameplay payoff at some point. A Dark Room does that. The classic idle game, Progress Quest, does not. Anti-Idle is stuffed full of mini-games, so much so that you could think of it as an anti-i… oh, I see what you did there.
But then, I’ve never seen the appeal of visual novels (versus actual novels) either.
: Zubon
The first hints to this year’s Living Story kickoff dropped this morning with an ominously voiced video showcasing the major content of next week’s Origins of Madness. The Origins of Madness chapter is one of the last four for the first season of the Living Story. I think maybe we will learn about Scarlet’s origins? That’s mostly unclear with the official preview page not up yet. I am hoping for some personal story-ish content as well.
Massively, and others, got a press preview of the next chapter. It focuses on two major boss battles. The non-permanent addition is fighting a stories-high Twisted Marionette, which has testing cycles as it seemingly descends from Scarlet’s UFO to stomp on players. The permanent boss battle involves gigantic jungle wurms in Bloodtide Coast.
I am pretty excited. Open world boss battles have become pretty core to my favorite things in Guild Wars 2. I play Tequatl as much as I can, and the Temples and other world bosses are pretty much go to content when Mrs. Ravious and I ask what’s next… especially when we are bit too wound out or wine’d up to play in WvW. (Though, playing drinking games based on commander… uhh, commands is pretty fun. Protip: do not take a sip every time someone yells “stackâ€.) Continue reading [GW2] Living Story Season 1 Startup
…or rather, “someone else pays for it.”
My Team Fortress 2 buddies have seriously gotten into Mann vs. Machine mode, and I was recruited as a reliable Engineer. I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 on tickets and a backpack expander. I certainly don’t begrudge Valve the money, given how much play time I have gotten from TF2.
The last time we completed a tour, I received a professional sniper rifle killstreak kit. For non-TF2 people, that is a fancy cosmetic item that attaches to the standard weapon for a popular class, but it takes a bunch of other resources to use it. And, to my shock, it sells for about $50 on the Steam market. Mine sold for that in about a week, which netted enough in my Steam wallet to pay for my initial cost, then all the MvM tickets I am likely to use this year, and then a game or two besides.
I am happy to take the sponsorship, although I am shaky on why one might spend that much on one component for one cosmetic item for one weapon for one class in a game. Maybe it is a really nice cosmetic item. As it is, there are apparently people who are willing to sponsor me to play games with my friends and get bonus items, as long as they get one of the rarer bonus items. Pro circuit it’s not, but deal.
: Zubon