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Taking Advantage of the Disney Meta

There is a certain class of fan that treats a day at the park like a game. Most time on rides and least time in line wins. With the addition of FastPass, the strategy has become even more Serious Business.
— TV Tropes on Disney Theme Parks

In one of KTR’s great missed connections, I am at Disney right now. Here, as in your game’s forums, you can take advantage of the people who very seriously study your form of entertainment.

Most of our readers are not serious theorycrafters who believe others are borderline griefers if they are intentionally being less than maximally efficient. Those theorycrafters, however, are really useful to the rest of us because they find the efficiencies, and that knowledge can spread freely. You need not be maximally efficient to learn how you can do what you already do better with almost no effort.

Enter tourings plans. People have already figured out which days at the park are the busiest and what order to ride rides to minimize your time waiting in line. You do not need to take the maximally efficient route to knock an hour or more off your waiting time, which is a good thing both for you and for the people who would be standing behind you in those lines.

Bonus note 1: in the off-season, all lines are shorter, so I have stood in perhaps an hour of lines over two days. Bonus note 2: if you are relatively sedentary, as gamers often are, practice walking and being on your feet for hours. After two not-full days at the parks, we have one member of our party who wants a day off. That leads to bonus note 3: schedule a day off amidst a multi-park trip, preferably Saturday.

: Zubon

[GW2] The Ebb and Flow of Tequatl

I was in Disney World when Tequatl hit.  It was interesting to see the race for world first from an out-of-game, and by the time I returned on Friday the meta had mostly solidified around the updated world boss fight. Across the weekend I felt I had a pretty good look at the event and the community surrounding it.

Stacking The Main Event

Tequatl of old required little thought. There was no danger of being near the dragon. In fact with the additional enemies roaming the exterior marshes it was more dangerous away from the dragon. There was a laser few people cared about, and I guess some turrets or something. Outside of a few fears there was not much to do besides press #1 and watch the nightly news before a rare popped out of Tequatl’s right arm. Some things have changed, and some remain the same. Continue reading [GW2] The Ebb and Flow of Tequatl

[GW2] Experience With the New Patch So Far

Guild chat does not work for some people. I am one of them. Sparkfly Fen, the center of the new content, is on perpetual overflow.

I cannot play the new content with my friends or even talk to them, but other than that and the bugs, it is going well so far. Reasonable expectations: in a few patches, the game will be back to where it was last week, and by the time I am on vacation, the new content will be playable.

: Zubon

[GW2] Tribulation Get!

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I beat Super Adventure Box, World 1 in Tribulation Mode. Where to even begin?

It’s not overly hard. Yes, there were spots where it took quite some time to get that right line and jumping precision. There were plenty of places I found “unfair”, such as Zone 1’s rock path right after checkpoint 2. Jeromai muses more on the the concept of “hard” in Tribulation Mode, and I think he comes to the right conclusion. It’s more about time than difficulty.

How quickly can a player find that right path? Going back to the rock path for the first few rocks I noticed that the rock’s response time seemed dependent on where I landed and what angle I came in on the platform. The less of the platform under my feet and the more precarious the angle seemed to make the rock unsure whether to ground pound with the resulting invisible shockwave of death. The later rocks were more easily foiled with a dodge aimed directly at the rock. I figured out that part of the puzzle, and all of the sudden unfairness was not an issue since I saw that narrow lane where it was very fair (and beatable). Continue reading [GW2] Tribulation Get!

Unrealized CoH Dreams: Origins

City of Heroes did great things with scaling that other games are still struggling to adapt, but its character origins were a vestigial feature that never panned out. The early designs made origins important, but that did not translate to the final game.

City of Heroes used “origin” where another game might use “race,” just as it had “archetypes” instead of “classes.” Continue reading Unrealized CoH Dreams: Origins

[GW2] The Insulated Second Game

Zubon quite correctly pointed out in discussing some of Guild Wars 2 endgame progression that structured PvP remains insulated. It’s a small nod or jab at what I feel is a rather large problem. Guild Wars 2 is two separate games.

The first game is the one I mostly write about. It is the one most Guild Wars 2 bloggers seem to be playing. Except for gear-based arena-like PvP and player dueling, it is mostly a complete MMO. It has PvE, dungeons, and server-based PvP (WvW). This first game is what gets media attention, player attention, and probably generates the most income for ArenaNet. A PAX Prime interview by Massively has one anonymous ArenaNet dev stating with regard to that second game that ‘most people who play Guild Wars 2 only play PvE’.

The second game is structured PvP where when entered all that hard work done in the first game vanishes. All skills and equipments are unlocked. Builds can be changed without any gold cost. And players fight in about a fair manner as can be expected in an MMO. The second game has its own currency (Glory) uncaring about any of the dozen currencies in the first game (and vice versa). Continue reading [GW2] The Insulated Second Game

[GW2] Slow Creep

Last year, Guild Wars 2 was perceived as experiencing three-monther doldrums and had calls for increasing character advancement options. Lost Shores included the first Ascended items and Fractals of the Mists, a dungeon where rewards increased at deeper levels and an “agony” mechanic demanded item-based progression. Developers promised more character advancement, a higher level cap, and more tiers of loot. I flipped out and stormed off. I read that as the death of the horizontal endgame I signed up for. Respect for Ravious’s ongoing enjoyment was the main thing that kept me from posting daily screeds.

Fast forward six or eight months, and I became willing to give trust another chance. Now about half the slots have Ascended items, with many options and several ways to get them. The level cap has not increased. The endgame is still mostly horizontal, with expanded Achiever content through achievements, appropriately enough. I do not feel obliged to delve thirty layers into Fractals to have a worthwhile character in PvE or WvW. sPvP remains insulated.

I am still expecting more character advancement. Long before the latest update, a guildmate described anticipated crafting changes as a precursor to Ascended armor; we happened to get weapons first. I still think Ascended gear is a design mistake, but since the tier is here, sure, complete it. The slow pace implies that we will not be seeing a new tier several times a year, which is comforting. Several proposed changes are expanding character options, not creating a new layer of them. Again, comforting — “more options” is what I signed up for.

I do not know if I overreacted or if ArenaNet changed plans. I certainly heard “more progression” and “we never promised a horizontal endgame.” I saw the worst advancement schemes from WoW (item-based progression), LotRO (gloom), and DAoC (Trials of Atlantis) being planned all at once. If that change is coming at this pace, I can deal with it; that could actually feel like “progression” rather than “churn.”

I may still flip out and storm off again if character advancement pressures accelerate. I am already concerned about how they are affecting alt-friendliness.

In the long run, trying to retain players through planned obsolescence is just prolonging a death spiral. The further the endgame is from the start, the less attractive your game is to new players, and every time you have a gear reset to bring the new endgame back closer, you upset your existing players who can see the treadmill more clearly.

: Zubon

Good Title

To quote the developer:

I just finished a new [game], and it’s an introspective take on a personal life experience I once had that I think leaves me emotionally vulnerable, while encouraging the player to think about their own feelings and how they’re perceived by the people around them.

It’s called Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar.

You may be able to guess what the game is about.

: Zubon

The Treachery of Images

Regular readers know that I rarely include pictures in my posts. I am not a visual person. My mental world is verbal and quantitative, and embellishment usually strikes me as willful distraction preluding deception. I write about mechanics and gameplay and seem to be made suspicious by great graphics because what are you trying to hide?

I am unusual in this respect. I have poor vision and am somewhere in the bottom ten percent for mental imagery. Those with better sensory gifts may instead see that “embellishment” as the whole point, with the game mechanics there as a framework for the aesthetic experience.
Continue reading The Treachery of Images

[GW2] Tribulation Matrix

Tribulation Mode in Super Adventure Box was made for specific niche of gamer. I personally love games and mechanics that require very specific action sequences. Super Meat Boy comes to mind as one of the last ones requiring intense and correct actions. Anyway, many gamers outside the niche just fail to see any fun in this type of gameplay; so I made a short video to provide, perhaps, a bit of explanation. Enjoy!


–Ravious