Game musings and news

[sei]

An interesting example is WoW. At launch, all of the Horde races were pretty grape ugly, or cow. Not surprisingly, this led to there being more Alliance than Horde (despite Horde having access to Shaman and therefore Bloodlust, which made them strictly better than Alliance at raiding, and also the infamous original incarnation of Will of the Forsaken, which made them strictly better at PvP, and therefore completely strictly better at everything).

You mean windfury totem vs salvation? IIRC the aggro dump from salv was key for a few encounters, but the real lesson is that all the stupid bullshit gaming companies do in the name of flavor at the cost of balance winds up being stupid.

I mean, fuck, in DAoC, each of the 3 factions had a different set of classes entirely. Yes, there was a lot of role overlap, but...

That gives me an idea! MMO where your character looks fucking gnilley and you can just hit checkboxes for additional powers/stats but each time you do it makes your character uglier and uglier until finally you are a godlike ugly fat burn victim with misshapen tits and a huge nose constantly shitting his/her pants

If RMS is any indication, this is how progression works in the MMO called LlinuxGNU/Linux.

Probably the best example of how human beings value being good looking over skilled is the sheer number of Blood Elf hunters. Orcs have amazing racials for being a hunter, and Blood Elves have only a close range (not where a hunter wants to be) short duration silence.

+1 to qtpie best racial

[pacobird]

Yeah, Fear Ward and Salvation contributed to overall progression by trivializing mechanics that relied on execution by individual players, which is waaaaay more valuable than increasing overall raid damage.

Horde abilities/racials might have been more useful for PvP but not for nothing Horde was also usually outnumbered, which meant faster queues, which meant better gear, more practice, and deeper engagement even if they lost games.

[Thad]

I once tried playing Arcanum with an Orc (named Hobag) with her Beauty stat ranked as high as I could get it. Never got too far; far enough that I'd hit the cap for her racial penalty and people were still mostly saying horrible things to her. I expect there are ways to break the cap; Arcanum's really pretty good about stuff like that. (My last playthrough I pushed my Charisma score up to like 20, recruited two characters who ordinarily refuse to be in the same party as one another, and eventually quit because the size of my party was slowing down my turn-of-the-century computer to the point that the game was no longer comfortably playable.)

I've said it before, but the best thing to do on a second playthrough is Ogre/Pit Fight Vet, with a starting intelligence of 1. The journal entries alone are worth the price of admission. (Though it locks you out of a good big chunk of the sidequests; you may want to keep potions onhand to temporarily boost your int.)

[Mongrel]

Arcanum is a game I think about getting sometimes... I should keep an eye out for a sale.

[Mongrel]

It occurs to me that an RPG where dialogue options came up like this would be fun:



Actually a Terminator RPG would probably be really cool, period! Maybe a mashup of T1 & T2. You start out dumped in the past as the first half, then turn protector for the second half.

[Thad]

Arcanum is a game I think about getting sometimes... I should keep an eye out for a sale.

Keep an eye on GOG; they have it on sale pretty frequently.

In fact I'm a bit surprised it's not part of the current sale.

[Mongrel]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/38 ... the-tavern

Catloaf? Is this you?

[Mongrel]

This is pretty cool: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/i ... lar-games/

[Classic]

This is pretty cool: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/i ... lar-games/

While that URL is pretty self-explanatory, it's now abridged to "http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/i ... lar-games/" from
"http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games"
when I view it. Is this unique to me, or what?

EDITED TO MAKE MONGREL'S LINK URL EASIER TO SEE AND READ.

[Cthulhu-chan]

That does seem to be a thing that is happening.

Dress your links, people. Sending them out into the world naked is just unfortunate for everyone involved.

[Bongo Bill]

We have URL tags for a reason.

[Blossom]

Of course, all that being said, it would be nice if it didn't do that to URLs.

[Thad]

It would be nice if YOU didn't do that to URLs.

[Mongrel]

Koipond has a board game Kickstarter up

This is an idea he had kicking around for a long time. It always sounded fun.

[pacobird]

Sorry, dude who bought my copy for $150 like 9 months ago!

[Blossom]

Ooh. Retranslation/general finishing, maybe?

[pacobird]

Probably just a ROM dump or whatever like the rest of the PS Classics. But hey, Suikoden 2 for six bucks!

[Blossom]

So, a second economy-breaking item dupe bug has shown up in Elder Scrolls Online.

[Thad]

Sorry, dude who bought my copy for $150 like 9 months ago!

Earthbound's still going for that much on eBay; I doubt somebody who paid $150 for a disc just wanted it so he could play the game.

[sei]

On the note of Earthbound, in case anyone didn't already know, the old EB strategy guide was digitized.