Guild Wars 2: The Gold Market

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 10, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 128 comments

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I last visited World of Warcraft about a year ago, and the cities were still flooded with hacked accounts spewing gold farming services into trade spam. This is despite a years-long battle on the part of Blizzard. If they can’t beat this problem, can anyone?

The problem:

“I need 100 gold to get my mount. Hm. But getting that 100g will take a lot of questing. And that questing would go faster if I had my mount while I was doing it! Can’t I just… get the gold now?”

Or perhaps:

“I won’t be able to afford this novelty pet until I’m at the end game. But I want the pet with me while I’m adventuring and leveling! It’s part of my character concept / costume / joke. I won’t be able to get it until I’m done with the character. Isn’t there some way to, you know, get it early?”

If you put goals in the distance, players are going to want to get them early. You can argue that paying for a reward defeats the purpose of having a reward. You can also tell people not to eat greasy food or get large, fad-driven tattoos on obvious parts of their body. You can decry something as a bad idea all you like, but people are going to do it anyway so you might as well put on your engineer hat and work out a system that can tolerate it.

Note: All screenshots here are from Guild Wars 2.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: The Gold Market”

 


 

Mass Effect 3 EP11: Toilets and Fatalism

By Shamus Posted Friday Sep 7, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 262 comments


Link (YouTube)

You know, I spent like five minutes going on about how they negated the decision in Mass Effect 1 where you chose to kill the Rachni Queen or set her free. However, I’m remembering now that the first game had this same problem. There were still sidequests in the game where Rachni showed up. So the game let you make a decision and then ignored it. Here in Mass Effect 3, it really does take into account if you saved her or not. It’s superficial, but its there. So, Mass Effect 3 fares better here than I gave it credit for. In fact, for this decision it fares better than the original.

The Space Quest 2 toilet scene I mentioned looks like this:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP11: Toilets and Fatalism”

 


 

Mass Effect 3 EP10:
The Space Tits Discussion

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 6, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 252 comments


Link (YouTube)

In this episode Chris mentioned a bit written by an actual armor smith, commenting on the various tradeoffs between sensible gender-obscuring armor and absurd stripper armor. It’s a pretty good read. As I’ve said in the past, I’m not against stripper armor in principle. My ideal game is one where everyone gets to choose just where they want to appear on the spectrum between boring and ridiculous.

It’s like a costume party. If a woman shows up dressed as a skimpy french maid I’m not going to be some puritanical killjoy and send her home. At the same time, I wouldn’t stop a woman as she came in, hand her a bikini, and say, “Here, you’re wearing this”. In any case, I give Mass Effect a solid thumbs up for their armor and uniform designs for Shepard.

Also we mentioned “I Remember Me”, a quest from the original Mass Effect. It’s a situation where Shepard has to confront a woman who has been kept in brutal slavery since childhood. I found it to be gut wrenching. Here’s an excerpt.

Also, Two Best Friends Play Prison Break.

 


 

Mass Effect 3 EP9: Interocitor Cycles

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Sep 5, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 391 comments

Well, Chris brought it up, so we are now officially talking about the ending. This will be the first of many discussions, I’m sure. Once again, no need to spoiler tag Mass Effect stuff. Anyone reading the comments has already bought the ticket and is clearly here to take the ride.

Also, sorry for bringing up my book again. That’s an obnoxious thing to do and I need to stop doing it. “Oh, I’m writing a book with these very themes!” Barf. It’s my innate desire to talk about what I’m working on, but it’s pretentious and it’s actually terrible for my productivity.


Link (YouTube)

Chris brings up Film Crit Hulk. I like Film Crit Hulk, which is why reading the FCH take of Mass Effect 3 was so painful. Film Crit Hulk wrote this bit about the ending of Mass Effect 3. I was really frustrated with it. As I’ve said before, I don’t mind people saying they liked the end of the game. If it gave you closure or satisfaction, then great. But if you’re going to wade in and say things like…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP9: Interocitor Cycles”

 


 

Guild Wars 2: Broken Stuff

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 4, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 153 comments

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Guild Wars 2 continues to impress. Having said, that, there are some really annoying problems with the game that are keeping me from enjoying it to the fullest. I don’t want you to go running off and buy the game, only to have you blame me for not giving you a proper heads-up. Some of these problems are serious, some are minor, some are situational. This is not a comprehensive list, it’s just what I’ve run into.

Fair warning: One of these complaints might not be entirely genuine. It is left as an exercise to the reader to figure out which one. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: Broken Stuff”

 


 

Various Announcements

By Shamus Posted Sunday Sep 2, 2012

Filed under: Notices 207 comments

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Someone commented that the most flattering review of Guild Wars 2 so far is the empty hole it left in my blog. In order to make some halfhearted pretense of effort before alt-tabbing back to the game, allow me to hit you with a bunch of stuff that you need to know. Also there will be screenshots of Guild Wars 2 landscaping porn, because screenshots are more interesting than bullet-points. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Various Announcements”

 


 

Guild Wars 2: What’s Different?

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Aug 29, 2012

Filed under: Game Reviews 204 comments

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I’m a few days into Guild Wars 2 at this point. I’ve tried about half the classes and all but one of the races. I’ve played enough that I’m ready to start making bold proclamations with regards to gameplay. Specifically, this game is my new gold standard for how an online game should play.

Maybe it’s too early and the game is too young to go around making blanket statements like that. If it all turns to frustration and tears later I suppose I’ll regret being so nice. I’m willing to risk that eventuality.

Some people are accusing this game of still being grind-y. Let’s get our definitions straight. Or at least, my definition, since I’m the one writing this thing. I consider grinding to be doing something inherently boring in order to make progress. This intersects a bit with what Chris has said in the past about motivation in his video on gamification. If you set your rewards improperly, then the gameplay becomes a means to an end instead of a source of entertainment. Grind is an even more severe case of the problem, where the gameplay is fundamentally un-engaging no matter how you structure the rewards, and the game has to resort to Skinner Box systems to motivate you to proceed.

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But here’s the thing… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: What’s Different?”