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I Get Mail

We frequently receive search engine optimization spam. I presume everyone who runs or writes for a website does. They can help us increase our ad revenue! Okay, so they have never looked at the site. They heard about us from our current ads, but did not click and increase our ad costs! Okay, so they are just blatantly lying from the first sentence to the last.

Replying to spam is generally a bad idea, but I am tempted to have a Popehat pony e-mail exchange sometimes. What do you think of our current KTR ads? By what percent do you think we could increase our revenue? Would it be enough to buy a pony?

: Zubon

Quantum Leap

I am still playing Dawn of the Dragons, despite the standard social media game mechanics. Something about the energy bars and the false sense of achievement is compelling.

Mission zone 10 is an expansion pack gear reset sort of experience. Players quickly acquire zone 9 gear due to the multiplayer mechanics, and then better from leveling up while wearing it. Along the way, nothing except zone 9 raids do much damage to you. Bosses deal trivial damage, and random encounters deal exactly 1 per attack. And then you hit zone 10. Continue reading Quantum Leap

[GW2] Funding Flame and Frost

As always, the Guild Wars 2 gem store additions have caused controversy and counter-controversy across a variety of mediums. I feel that this month’s Flame and Frost update went aggressive in terms of getting players to bolster the gem/gold exchange rate or simply spend some cash. It is interesting though because at the same time there was a competing interest in game with the Super Adventure Box. ArenaNet keeps on presenting ways to spend money and time in different ways, which is both exciting and tiring.

Fused Weapons

Might as well start with the most controversial piece, in my opinion (not the unbreakable pick, but we’ll get there). The Black Lion Chests, the bit of the gem store everybody loves to hate, has “for a limited time” a Fused Weapon Claim Ticket. This is a rare chance, but people seem to be attacking the chests with fervor. The rarity and the random-number generation (“RNG”) involved seem to be making sure some players open dozens and dozens of Black Lion Chests to receive no fiery, golden ticket. Of course those few blessed that opened one or two chests and received one or two Tickets have a valuable thing they can’t trade away. Continue reading [GW2] Funding Flame and Frost

Checklists

The endless, procedurally generated gameplay of A Valley Without Wind can sink into “what’s the point?” If you like Metroidvania a lot more than I do, having an endless stream with minor variations might be bliss, the way I could happily play Settlers of Catan every day. For me, it is one among many and not the best.

I started by jumping right in and exploring. Continue reading Checklists

Differing Visions

This New Yorker article is a pleasant contrast between SimCity and Dwarf Fortress, using a classic version of SimCity rather than the recent debacle. (Fun note: “SimCity debacle” gets 36,000 hits on Google and 126,000 if you remove the quotes.) Representative quote about Dwarf Fortress:

(For a while, the melting point for the fat layer of the dwarves’ skin was set too low, resulting in instant death for any creature that got damp and then entered a warm room—baroque and violent bugs like this are very much in the spirit of the game).

I was once interested in trying Dwarf Fortress but the learning curve was more than I was willing to invest to overcome.

: Zubon

[GW2] Super Achievements

My goal this month in Guild Wars 2 was to get a Super Adventure Box skin. The most relaxing way, I felt, to do so was to run through the first three zones on about 9 days. Each zone gets me 2 bauble bubbles, of which I would need 50 to get my virtual tourist t-shirt. My “daily” was a nice refreshing jaunt through the first world.

Along the way I started to consider the achievements for Super Adventure Box. I had already read Jeromai’s pleasure and pain of completing some, and to be honest it didn’t sound like fun. But, I needed help finding where to buy upgrades, and I noticed that the dedicated Guild Wars 2 wikites had been super thorough with producing a guide for each zone. I did not feel up to using hours of my time to find all the baubles or shops in a zone myself. I was more than happy to follow a guide. Continue reading [GW2] Super Achievements

Minecraft, The Return

I am not sure how I got sucked back in to Minecraft. I think it was hearing somewhere along the lines about Mystcraft. Mystcraft is one of many fine mods where players can write in books to create ages, warp to those ages, and profit or die. One simple mod completely changes how the game is played.

I got seriously, seriously sucked in. Modding has come a long way since I really played Minecraft. The big pre-official mod API seems to be Minecraft Forge because it allows mods to be used on multiplayer servers quite well. I think everybody is hoping for an official mod API for Minecraft 1.6, but Mojang seems to be tight-lipped about when it could be ready. Either way having Forge raised the water level quite a bit, in my opinion because mods didn’t have to be coded differently to handle multiplayer.

The other thing that raised the water level (again, in my opinion) was Feed the Beast (FTB). Feed the Beast is one of the best modpacks just overflowing with toys. Modpacks are still tricky-ish to make because all the mods don’t necessarily talk nice to one another. FTB made sure a huge swath of excellent mods could talk to one another. This meant that Mystcraft could run with Buildcraft and automated mines could be created in the Age of Diamond Tendrils. Dark thaumaturgic rituals in Thaumcraft could modify how bees pollinate trees in Forestry. This was a whole new game, and I sometimes find it hard to go back to vanilla in lieu of FTB.

I felt like I was graduating from Basic Lego to Technic Pirate Ninjago City with Mindstorms attachment. Continue reading Minecraft, The Return

Meaningless Progression

But isn’t it always? More specifically, from yesterday’s comments:

But what if your progress was in accomplishing something in the world, discovering story, or exploration? Essentially, if you left a legacy behind, an impact on the world that everyone could see, then it wouldn’t matter so much if you died.
— Machination

That is how A Valley Without Wind works. The character dies, but the town is still bigger, the lieutenants are still defeated, etc. (Also, RL functions somewhat similarly.)

But A Valley Without Wind is also a procedurally generated endless Metroidvania. Once you save one continent, there is a next one. And a next one. And it is not as though the NPCs are fully conscious beings, so the only person there to care is you as you run on the treadmill.

But isn’t it always?

: Zubon

Meaningless Permadeath

A Valley Without Wind has permadeath. A character dies once and s/he is gone. And then you get a new character with all the same inventory, upgrades, etc. So…

: Zubon

I’m told that there was some progress lost in the launch version of the game. Now you just respawn as a new character and head back to the mission.