.

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.

.

[GW2] Expansion Calculus

That Korean Investment firm, KDB Daewoo Securities, is talking Guild Wars 2 expansion… again. They are really keen on it happening the second half of 2013. They probably use models, stock discussions, and neuromantic rituals to determine it among all the other NCSoft happenings for 2013. Let’s make this simpler.

ArenaNet says their Guild Wars 2 Live Team is 15-20 times larger than the live team of Guild Wars 1.  The Guild Wars 1 Live Team is about 5 people. ArenaNet staffs over 300 people. That leaves 2/3 of the studio working on something else. Take away business, pure tech, etc., etc., that still leaves a big chunk working on… something else. Enough to make KDB Daewoo bring it up a second time. Continue reading [GW2] Expansion Calculus

[WS] “D”ominion Bags

WildStar is going to be two-factioned. That’s a discussion I want to have with Carbine, and the merits and flaws are better saved for another post. Regardless, the limelight has fallen on the evil empire, and they are turds. World of Warcraft had vanilla versus monsters. Rift had religion versus technology. Star Wars The Old Republic had yin versus yang. WildStar appears to have rag-tag rebel hippies versus a pretentious, self-loathing evil empire. And right now, the Dominion is who I would choose to play. Continue reading [WS] “D”ominion Bags

Conventions of the Genre

I picked up Spec Ops: The Line on a sale while people were celebrating it as one of the best games of the year, particularly for its message about escapist violence and moral ambiguity. I have the problem that I have never played a military shooter game, so the deconstruction is wasted on me. The characters start doing things that are morally problematic and I immediately recognize it as such, from the first fight in the helicopters where no one seems to care that those are potentially occupied buildings you are shooting around/through. Bioshock’s “would you kindly” is not quite the same if you are not inured to obeying quest givers just because they are quest givers. Funny Games and Natural Born Killers do not fully work if you are not familiar with what they are critiquing.

On a different level, not having played a military shooter game, there is gameplay for me to get used to that the game takes as a given. All those bars and dials and buttons and mechanics we are so used to in MMOs can be bafflingly complex for a first-time player. Starting my first game, I’m not 100% sure where I should be looking for those, while this game obviously assumes some familiarity. Maybe I need to play it on newbie difficulty so I can figure out the buttons while people are shooting at me. Conversely, I have the opposite problem in games where I already know all the genre conventions: the introduction is ridiculously tedious as it walks new players through everything while I just want to know the three things that differ in this game, and they might not even cover that because the few differences are “advanced features” that will be explained well after the tutorial. It is hard to find a good middle ground between “you don’t need to tell me everything” and “hey, the game never explained that!” particularly with wide diversity in player knowledge. (Advantage: WoW for being the first MMO for the vast majority of its players.)

: Zubon

[WS] Ark Questions

Like I said last week, Zubon and I are heading off to sunny California to participate in Arkship 2013. Arkship 2013 is going to be a pretty big gathering (30-40 people) where we will get to play the upcoming MMO, WildStar, and participate in dev panels on specific topics. There will be an NDA, but after the event, we will be able to talk about a lot of our experiences.

There was a crush of press feedback last week, and since today is WildStar Wednesday there might be another one today. I highly recommend checking out some of the links compiled by WildStar Central. If you just read one, I recommend Ten Ton Hammer’s write up From Beak to Butt.

Anyway, if you have questions regarding anything about the game. We will do our best to get them answered. Or let us know if there is an aspect of the game that has your attention. I think we are going to get a good amount of play time so we could try and focus in on that aspect. Either way, I am sure next week, and following, we will have plenty to say about WildStar.

–Ravious

Static Gameplay

I have continued to poke at Anti-Idle, and I have run into the same problem that others have cited about Guild Wars 2: there is a large dead zone between “have all your toys” and the cap. In Anti-Idle, that is actually thousands of levels, but it’s an idle game, so those can mostly happen while you’re AFK.

Once you reach the point where all the fights feel the same, you have completed the meaningful content. You beat the game. You’re done and can quit now. Also, when “RPG elements” has come to mean “character advancement,” it stops feeling like your character is advancing when you are just adding new numbers to old abilities. Again, game over, you won.

The sense I get from GW2 is that we are seeing the history of its development. (Entirely made up story follows.) Long before they abandoned the idea of horizontal progression, the original idea was like GW1: low cap, almost everything at the cap. Let’s give the characters all their skills by level 20. Hmm, people really like progression. Okay, we’ll match the industry leader and have 80 levels. Let’s push the elite skills back so we don’t have a 60-level dead zone. You saw a bit of that “needs more progression” when slot skills went from “all available immediately” to “buy 5 in this tier to unlock the next.” There must have been months of meetings trying to decide how to give players more toys over time without breaking the model of having one skill bar. There are some bonuses to unlock via talents, and your gear starts giving you more (not just bigger) stats, and … well, that plateau is kind of essential in the original notion of horizontal progression. Let’s hope they solve it before the coming level cap increase(s) and new tier(s) of gear.

GW1 had hundreds of elite skills you could capture, along with secondary classes, so you could pick your one bar of skills from literally thousands of skills. Part of horizontal progression is having the option to progress, more options not just ones with bigger numbers.

: Zubon

[GW2] Forebode the February Update

ArenaNet comes out to say a couple days ago that the February update will not be the WvW update we all hoped. It’s disappointing, but like the January update, they are making the core game right for the long, long run. It sucks; I kick the dirt. But, wait. ArenaNet releases the product page for the February update shortly thereafter. Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm.

in Flame and Frost: Prelude I railed on ArenaNet for correcting people’s expectations after the January update had dropped. I think this is setting up a much better information pattern. The fans have weeks of narrowed speculation. We know not to expect anything big for WvW. We do expect selectable Daily Achievements. There are still a lot of questions, but there are many weeks to fill in with blog posts on the smaller subjects. Continue reading [GW2] Forebode the February Update

[GW2] Signed CE Contest Winner

After much deliberation, loss of sleep, and role-playing various personalities to obtain differing points of view, I’ve come upon the winner of the Kill Ten Rats Guild Wars 2 Signed Collector’s Edition Contest. Congratulations to Jo!

There were lots of great entries, and all the different styles made it really hard to choose. Thank you all for participating, and thanks to ArenaNet for making this happen here and at many other great blogs. Continue reading [GW2] Signed CE Contest Winner

Concurrent Comments

You may have achieved the right balance in your bullet hell game when the comment:

this [beating every level without getting hit] is probably the easiest impossible achievement on Kongregate

appears within five minutes of:

this is, quite literally, the bare-bones minimum of shooting games with nary a crap given if it was even playable or not

: Zubon

I must admit it is some BS to have a boss (5-3, stage 3) that can shoot from (not just at) any point on the screen, including exactly where your ship is, so you need to already have seen its entire attack pattern to not be sitting where a bullet is about to materialize. Although, if my military had the ability to shoot from inside our enemies’ ships and bodies, I would totally exploit that.

Quick Review: Costume Quest

I’m almost caught up on Double Fine PC games! I would totally play a game called “Middle Manager of Justice” if I had an i-whatever, although Ben Kuchera recommends against.

It’s Halloween, monsters took your sibling because s/he was dressed as a candy corn, and it’s up to you to save him/her as well as all that luscious candy. Collect candy, costumes, battle stamps, and trading cards. Also stop an otherworldly invasion.

When you battle the monsters, you take on the form of whatever costume you are wearing such as a robot, unicorn, or Statue of Liberty. Combat is set up with that JRPG feel but with quicktime events. They feel more forgivable as a means of attack than as the random crap they usually are, but they are still not fun. Per RPG standard, monsters level as quickly as you do, so almost all the fights in the game are the same fight apart from a couple of boss fights. It has long animations and not much strategy, so combat mostly feels like padding.

The interesting part is exploring the areas, talking to characters, and seeing what stuff there is. The puzzles are minimal, basically find the right spot (which will be pointed out) and use the right skill (which will be hinted). Exploration works similarly, with only a few optional items not explicitly pointed out by your characters.

Like Stacking, there is no voice acting. Lots of word bubbles. If your child is old enough to read, s/he is old enough to play; very family friendly, few buttons, low difficulty. The Steam version comes with the DLC, which is effectively Act IV. Total playtime of about nine hours for 100% completion.

: Zubon