Nefchast’s Gaming Blog

Mostly about Video Games, but boredom often breeds endless creations…

Archive for February, 2009

Apocrypha.

Posted by nefchast on February 26, 2009

EVE Online’s next expansion, Apocrypha, has been on Singularity (SiSi, their testing server) for a couple weeks and, for the most part, has been pretty unplayable. I sunk some time in yesterday downloading the new patches for it and getting started on putting my T3 Amarr ship (Legion) together, ending the evening with an attempt at the new scanning system.

The first thing I noticed was the skill queue was working now, and wonderfully. They gave the SiSi characters an injection of the subsystem skills needed to pilot the T3 strategic cruiser, so all I had to do was queue up the Amarr one and wait (roughly 43 minutes) for them to finish. There has been some complaints over the limited time span of the skill queue — you can only queue within a 24 hour period, but I’ve found it a very welcome and useful feature. The addition of the queue has also seen the addition of a couple extra options when using skill books — you can inject them (add them to your character sheet, but not begin training), train them to the first level, or add them to the end of your current queue.

In addition to the new skill queue UI window, the fitting window also got an upgrade, and some changes since its earlier incarnation. Before on SiSi the fitting screen was a large circle, clear in the center to show your ship in dock, with two collapsable windows on the sides that displayed modules in station on the left (along with drones, and a few other module/item related drop down menus) and ship stats on the right. (including effective HP, cap recharge, passive shield HP gain, etc — good stuff) The same features are still retained, but it’s more of a fusion of the old and new fitting windows. Gone is the hole in the circle (the circle is still there, it has your highs, mids and lows, rigs and subsystems) replaced with a seperate graphic depicting your ship in space — fully rotatable. The current fitting window is smaller than the previous new one, and can be minimized or closed like the old. I rather like the current desingn, I like the previous new one the best though.

Tech III (T3) ships are one of the major additions this expansion, and something I’ve been eagerly awaiting. My PvP alt character is spec’d specifically for cruiser class ships and customizing my own is just awesome. The one I set up first had 5 high slots, 2 medium and 8 lows, fitted with the heaviest tank I could for giggles and I got a buffer over 50k effective — not bad for just messing around with a little cruiser. (no, I couldn’t do much else with it after that, but it’d make a good bait ship!) The second and final setup for the night saw 5 highs, 3 meds and 7 lows — not a massive change from the previous, and the tank was still good (couldn’t tell the effective with armor hardners on, but it should’ve been roughly 35-40k effective) and I grabbed one of the new core launchers and some probes and headed out scanning.

My scanning skills on this character suck, in fact I have none — I had to train astrometrics to 1 before I could start my scanning adventure. I’m not sure on all the rules of the new scanning system, but I’m quite sure I didn’t have the skills to do any of it apart from practice. It seems to actually get a warpable location you have to pick up the objects signature with 4 different probes, from my weak skills I could only really use one on the map. Which brings up another new feature to scanning — at least I think it’s new, I don’t remember it in the bit of exploration I did long ago — the probes can warp by themselves and you can control them from the solar system map. Each probe shows on the map and has a X Y Z box and arrows to move it around the map to where you want it to go. You can also change the scan radius (between about 0.5 AU to 32 AU) to help track down locations further. It seems the initial search to see if there’s anything in a system will be fast — launch one probe and scan 32 AU, move on or explore further, with the actual probing taking a little bit longer — having probes moveable anywhere in the system is cool, adding a bit of depth to exploration. Also with the moveable probes comes recalling them. A simple button on the scanning interface causes all active probes to warp back to you so you can collect them — awesome feature. (though I havn’t gotten the pick up to work yet, either I’m doing it wrong or it’s still not in/bugged) I nearly tracked one cosmic anamoly down, but the map kept bugging, which then bugged the rest of the game, forcing me to either leave the system or restart the game. So, I havn’t been able to get the scanning to fully work yet.

If I can get  the scanning to work, or get a corpmate to handle it, I’ll try checking out wormholes this weekend. (if they’re even up and working) I want to test out the T3 ships and the sleeper NPCs.

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AddOns and more

Posted by nefchast on February 24, 2009

I finally got around to customizing my Runes of Magic UI this past weekend. Curse.com has a section for it and already the addons are flowing in. Anyone who has used them in WoW or other MMOs will recognize many of the features the addons give and tweak.

Apart from UI modifications, I also got my character into the mid-20’s, joined a guild and did a bit of grouping. One thing that is excellent about the game is the community, higher level players are often around in the lowbie zones to assist in difficult quests or to answer questions. Grouping is generally easy to do, though the group content tends to be deadly difficult. (very, very deadly) Given the dual-class system you can typically find players of any type in abundance, this leads to a general ‘bring whoever wants to come’ kind of grouping. I like the style so far, will have to see how it changes later in game.

The guilds in RoM have levels, the levels determine the number of members allowed and some guild content. From what I’ve seen I think most of the guild content is still in the works, they’ve got a level cap set at 5 currently. Leveling a guild is accomplished through the members donating different types of resources — gold, ore, wood, herbs — to fill a type of quota needed to move up. There seems to be an option for guild versus guild PvP — not sure if it’s actually enabled yet, I havn’t seen or heard of any wars going on. Guild halls will also be available at some point. (the npc is in-game for the GH, it’s either the level cap or lack of GH content right now) I’m waiting to see more on guilds in the future — it has the potential to be a very fun part of the game.

Lastly, I’ve done a lot of crafting too. Crafting is quite the grind in RoM, harvesting especially. The items you can make, apart from the rares, are generally not as good as the dropped loot — so I don’t see it being highly profitable. Arcane Transmutation is a — I’d consider it crafting, at least — very fun feature, allowing some really nice customization and buffing to equipment. Using charges that can be bought with in-game tokens — farmed from dailies — or bought off the cash shop, the AT takes runes, jewels and other items and allows the player to remove stats from some pieces and mix them with others. (that was a pretty simple and generalised explanation, you can use fusion stones with pieces of equipment to turn them into mana stones, and mana stones can be combined with another piece of equipment to give it extra stats — to a total of 6 different stats) While costly, I suspect I’ll be doing a lot of transmuting in the future, especially for equipment I can give to alts.

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Freebies Cont… (Runes of Magic)

Posted by nefchast on February 19, 2009

I spent all of yesterday evening and night playing RoM, though I wanted to play a bit of all three I just couldn’t pull myself away. I’m still pretty low level, 13/11  S/P, and I’ve just begun to figure out what I like about my setup and how to play it.

The great thing about RoM is the customization that you can have in your playstyle, even with the limited number of single classes.  I started as a Priest, leveled it to 10 for the second class, and was certain it’d remain my main. The secondary class I had some idea on — the Scout class had appeal to me, I wanted another class that did not use mana and had some usefulness. The Scout is a ranged DPS class with some debuffs and uses a powerpool called ‘concentration’. The Priest class is primarily healing, with some ranged magic damage — the switch between the two was pretty natural since my playstyle didn’t change much, DoT Nuke Nuke Nuke Loot. The options it gave, though, were much better — I no longer had to use mana to kill things, so I could reserve that power for heals. I made the switch from a Priest primary to the Scout because I simply enjoyed the skills on the Scout more, and I still had plenty of healing effectivness on the shared Priest powers — at least for my solo play. I’ll need to explore the other classes more to see what they offer, and refine the type of class I want to play further — currently thinking a K/S (Knight/Scout) for a sort of Ranger-ish build. (I think the Druid class is coming at some point, I guess that’d be a true ‘Ranger’)

The other element of RoM I’ve yet to explore is grouping and guilds. I have yet needed a group, the leveling is fast so far and I’ve only really seen one group quest — which is now too low level to really matter. While this ease of play is great for the casual or solo gamer, I just wonder what impact it could have on the community. Harder games, while less fun and casual  overall, do encourage community building efforts and tend to have the best communities. Community is important to me and could easily kill an otherwise fun game. I’ve stuck with Eve Online for years now, hardly ‘playing’ the game, just because of the community. As far as guilds go, I’ve seen a few recruiting, but I tend to take the choice seriously, wanting to look into their member counts, active members, maturity, hardcore/casual standings, plans for the present and future… This tends to bog me down, but whenever I do get through the muck the results have always been good — even great — finding guilds that can last years through several different games. So, I’m now sorting through the guilds available, on my server at least (it should be Osha) and will likely give the other servers a good looking over.

Some things I’ve found to be pretty cool with RoM: the quest help, you can view the NPC givers or requirments on the world map, and even get a handy colored arrow to guide you to them. (up to three at once) This helps tremendously with the sometimes poor wording in the quests, or the larger cities with little to define locations.

There’s a lottery game that you can purchase tickets for, it works like real life ones — pick/random 5 different numbers, if you’re lucky they’ll be rolled at some point.

The AH works much like WoW’s, with a history button (don’t know if WoW added that, I think I remember an addon I had that did something similar) to see how an item’s price history has been — makes plopping things down on it a breeze.

Instant transportation between cities and within major cities is excellent, it helps those who are too low level to get a horse, or don’t want to buy one with cash. (I’ll be giving the game some time before deciding on dropping 10 bucks or so on a horse) 

Upon reaching level 13 (or was it 12? think it was 13) you get a special talisman that stores TP (Training Points, to increase the ranks of your skills) and after reaching so many you can form a item that allows you to transfer those points over to your other class. (you level your classes seperatly, and can only rank up when on the current class)

I’ll be exploring the addons this weekend. In other MMOs I’ve used them in varying degrees, from heavy raid use to light casual soloing, will be interesting to see what is out there currently.

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The Freebies.

Posted by nefchast on February 18, 2009

I’ve spent some time lately looking over gaming sites and some blogs. One thing that I’ve found is discussion and news on F2P (Free to Play) MMOs. I tend to only play AAA titles, though I’ve tried many F2P games in the past. None of them really did it for me. I have nothing against the micro-transaction business model — I actually really like it. But so far no game using it has really made me want to buy anything, that could be changing in the future.

So far I’ve given Runes of Magic, Atlantica Online and Wizard101 some time. Each of them free, each with optional micro-transactions. (W101 does have an optional subscription method, giving options is great–Dungeon Runners had that too, and I rather liked it) What was important to me with these three was the rise in quality over other F2P games I’ve played in the past. These are getting close to standing with some of the AAA titles. Even if they are a bit below them, they have one huge advantage — they’re FREE. I’ll detail a little about them that I’ve seen so far here, and might continue in the future.

RoM — it’s basically an assemblage of the popular MMO titles and some of their features, especially WoW. While I don’t usually like seeing a bunch of seemingly (even obviously) cut and paste features and content from one game to a next… this one does it for free and mixes some things up. Having a dual class system (I’m guessing a la Guild Wars, never really played that one much) allows some good variety and customization. Being able to select what stats you want furthers that, though I’ve never really cared about stats. Item content might be a bit small, I’ll really have to dig further into the game before making a conclusion on that. Crafting — I tend to like crafting in games, and do it a lot — it’s pretty standard here; however, you do get to take multiple crafting skills and so that’s a bonus. Other features are housing that is kinda EQ2 meets CoH/V bases. Overall, pretty good.

AO — This is the one that I’ve liked most so far. It’s an asian themed MMO, if you’re familiar with them you know the drill — pretty artwork, grindish leveling, high end turns to PvP. (and I think raiding, havn’t really looked into the end game much) The combat is turn-based similar to the Final Fantasy series (and many, many other series) with heavy pet use in the form of mercenaries. You get 8 pets total in the game, there’s good variety in them and you can equip them, modify their stats and skills. That’s practically gaming nirvana for me. Crafting is in the game, you queue up a workload then battle monsters in order to work it off and collect your finished product — a bit different from anything else I’ve seen and a cool way to help you through the level grinding. (especially with big workloads)

W101 — A F2P game with a low subscription option (10 bucks/month outside of a family plan) or purchasable game currency to unlock content bit by bit. While this may sound silly, I think it’s rather cool. Think about your typical MMO, let’s say WoW, you only really need to be in one zone at a time… instead of paying 15 bucks a month, for the whole game, why not spend a dollar or two on the zone you’re using at the time? For a hardcore gamer this option would probably not work, burning through content as fast as possible — the subscription model would be best for them. But for the mose casual gamer, or even non-gamer, that might spend a week or two in a single zone… this could only cost a few bucks a month. Or, if there’s some zones you don’t care about — don’t pay for them. It’s a highly kid and family friendly game, but that doesn’t mean it’s incredibly easy or simple. Combat is turn-based and done through cards, which summon up monsters and buffs/debuffs/heals. The monsters attack one of your enemies and then disappear. The use of different creatures for combat adds some extra entertainment to combat — instead of some sparkly particle effects, you’re treated to colorful animations that tend to be pretty humurous. Group combat seems to take place whether you’re in a group or not. The fights are shown in the game world, you can wander into them and join others. Mobs range from normal to elite to bosses (that I’ve seen), it doesn’t seem any of them are impossible to solo, but elite and boss mobs are much harder than normal ones, adding a bit of satisfaction to victory. Overall I think it’s a solid MMO, and if you’re a casual gamer or have a family with younger children — it’s worth a try.

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Art and Games.

Posted by nefchast on February 11, 2009

Same personal news as before (this is what you call being stuck in a rut, right?), but I have been thinking on the topic of gaming as an art lately. This generally happens a few times a year — I go about reading gaming articles, the topic of art and gaming comes up, I then spend time thinking about it (a lot of time). 

What is the definition of art?

   Ex. “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” (From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art)

While a broad definition, it does cover some games (I’d say several of the Final Fantasy games, Oblivion, Bioshock, etc.) and more — if personal opinion is used as the judge. What I think most people have done in the past — and present — is compare gaming to other forms of ‘art’ without keeping the basic definition of ‘art’ in mind. Books, movies, plays, dance, even painting/sculpture and music all follow a basic pattern — telling a story to a passive audience member, sometimes the story is obvious and sometimes abstract. Gaming, however, does not involve a passive audience member, but an active one. As such, it cannot be compared to the traditional forms of ‘art’. I’m sure there could be some exceptions here, as some plays involve the audience members, some sculptures incorporate moving or useable parts, but would they be considered games at that point?

What is the definition of a game?

   Ex. “an amusement or pastime” — “a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.” (From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/game)

If a game could simply consist of an action an individual or group takes and finds amusement from, then those sculptures that have interactive elements and plays that involve the audience members could be considered games as well as art.

So, are games a form of art? I would say so. Does it really matter? Probably not. All forms of entertainment, passive or active, are wonderful in their own ways.

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