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January 5, 2016

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December Adventures

To no one’s surprise, my December ended up being busy, and, while I got a respectable amount of gaming time in, I never got the time and/or inspiration to write about any of it before the new year, so I’ll dive right in and catch you up on what I’ve been up to.

House 2The biggest news from WildStar is that I finally hit 50 with my medic. I really love the way the medic plays as a DPS, and I’m in the process of piecing together the beginnings of a healing set. I’m hoping to start running veteran shiphands and dungeons with my guild soon, but I’m not promising I won’t get distracted by something else. I like the fact that, when you reach the cap, your XP doesn’t just disappear, giving you no reason to continue with content after hitting 50, but goes toward earning Elder Gems. I guess Guild Wars 2 has a similar system in Soul Shards, but the rewards for Elder Gems seem more worth my time.
I also took a little time out to get a couple of characters up to 14 so I can have some extra housing plots to mess around with, as well as scouting out a potential alt (Spellslinger? Engineer? Warrior? None of them are jumping out at me yet, which bodes well for my medic). My main character’s housing plot (pictured above) is desert themed, featuring scattered scrubby plants, a rowsdower farm (filled with plushie rowsdowers and rowsdower statues, since I don’t think you can get real ones), and even a crashed UFO. While I really like my house, it kind of rules out a lot of decor options. The first of my two new plots is going to be winter/ice themed. I say “going to be” because so far all it has is a few snow-covered rocks and the wintersday sky from the cash shop (which is beautiful, by the way). I’m holding off on dropping the 2 plat (ugh) for the snow-covered ground until my medic is a little more financially stable, and without that it loses a lot of its effect. The other plot is a bit of a hodgepodge at the moment. It’s where I dumped all of my space ship parts from the event they ran a while back, and I’m hoping to take that theme and run with it. It’s my engineer’s plot, so I’m hoping to make a kind of garage for ship building and repairs, which also happens to make it a great place to put all of my crafting and gathering stations. I’ll be sure to post some screenshots if/when they are a little more interesting.

HoT JungleI’ve been making my way through the jungles of Heart of Thorns with my revenant, slowly but surely. I won’t spoil anything, but the story is starting to take some interesting turns. My wife is working on a revenant of her own now, and I’m a bit torn as to which class to work on with her. The druid elite spec looks really fun, but I’m a little burnt out on the vanilla ranger. The thief’s daredevil elite spec also looks fun, but I’m not really sure if it’s my style. Then there’s my warrior, who I really like, but the Berserker elite spec doesn’t really interested me, though to be honest I haven’t seen many (any?) in action and never messed with one in the beta, so maybe it’s better than I think. I could, of course, also bring along one of my 80s for the sake of masteries and some much-needed hero points. So far I’ve spent a lot of time jumping around between all of the above, not making any significant progress on any of them.

One day I got a random craving for a superhero MMO. Marvel Heroes satisfies this craving most of the time, but I like the creative aspect of inventing my own hero instead of playing one Stan Lee invented fifty-some years ago. I never got to play the much-loved City of Heroes for more than an hour or two at a friend’s house, and every once in a while I get vicarious nostalgia for it just from reading fans’ reminiscences. So I loaded up both Champions Online and DC Universe Online and played both for about half an hour before remembering why I never played much of both and uninstalling them. It’s really too bad, because I really like the idea of a game where everyone can run around (or fly around, as the case may be) in tights and capes with campy names flinging all manner of superpowered attacks around. How is it that City of Heroes was so well loved, yet no one has really filled its void? I know there is a variety of revivals and spiritual successors in the works, but all of them still seem quite a ways from completion despite being in production for some time.

As far as non-MMOs go, I picked up Shovel Knight on the Wii U eShop. Normally I prefer PC versions of games, but it seemed wrong to buy a game like this that’s a love letter to Mega Man and Zelda 2 on anything other than a Nintendo console. Also the Wii U’s touch screen allows you to switch magic weapons without pausing, which is as close to a good a use for the tablet as any. It’s wonderfully weird and the levels are beautifully crafted; I highly recommend it.
I picked up Ark: Survival Evolved on the Steam Christmas sale. I think I’ll save this one for its own post, but for now I’ll say that I haven’t punched this many trees since the first time I played Minecraft.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks. With the Holidays over with my life should be a little more normal, so I should be back to more frequent updates soon. Happy new year everyone!

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December 11, 2015

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GW2: Finally Exploring Heart of Thorns

Purifier Unit HoT1
It’s funny, as excited as I was about Guild Wars 2’s first expansion, I haven’t gotten very far into the new content yet. The reason for this is because of a couple of things I didn’t expect. First, WildStar stole a lot of my attention. I knew from past experience with it that it was a good game and I was going to play it from time to time, but I expected my excitement over it to plateu before now, especially in the face of an expansion to Guild Wars 2. I know a lot of people who played WildStar for a while and then got tired of the setting and/or burnt out on the constantly frantic combat, but I’m still loving both. And it’s poised to steal my attention again this weekend, because I really want some of those space ship outfits and decor pieces. The other unexpected thing that happened was that I really like my Revenant. What’s even more unusual is that, while there are usually a lot of different ways to play every class, I generally fall into one that I like best. That hasn’t happened with the Revenant; I like the way he plays with every weapon and every legend. So far, I’ve just been rotating them out as the mood strikes me. I think my favorite so far has been mace/axe with the Mallyx legend. I can stack a lot of torment that way, the combo on the mace gives up to 9 stacks of might, then I switch to the hammer and kite things around while the torment burns them down. I also like sword/shield combination–it gives a nice balance of DPS and survivability–but I haven’t amassed enough hero points to unlock more than the first few sections of the skill tree and slot skills for the herald spec, so unfortunately I think I’m going to have to hold off on that one for a while. And yes, the fact that I’ve unlocked the shield means I finally got him to 80 a couple days ago. I ended up using about half of my Tomes of Knowledge and leveling the rest. I had planned to save more of the tomes and do more with personal story (I still haven’t finished the Orr parts on any of my characters), but one of the quests is bugged right now and I can’t progress, so I decided to just forget it and do the last ten or so levels with tomes so I could get to the new content.

Anyways, I finally glided my way into Verdant Brink. The theme of the expansion so far has been finding creative new ways for me to die. I expected to die a few times from wyvren attacks and acid-spewing plants, but getting zerged by knee-high raptors, knocked off of cliffs by giant bipedal mushrooms (this is revenge for all those hours of Mario I played as a kid, isn’t it?), and running out of glider energy and falling to my doom in a writhing vine pit were not on my list. Also, is it me, or does this zone desperately need more waypoints? I get that this area of the world is supposed mostly unexplored, but would it kill you to put up a few more so I don’t have to run/glide half way across the map to get back to where I died? Overall, though, when I’m not lying on the ground, the expansion has been pretty good. I know many players have felt hindered by the new post-80 mastery system, which is perceived (perhaps somewhat rightly) as a pointless grind just to give you something to level without causing gear and stat inflation, but I can see why it might get annoying later down the road. It is a little silly that I have to earn the ability to ride on updrafts. There’s wind going up, and whether I’m skilled or not, my glider should catch some of it at least. It’s especially annoying since a lot of the hero points and such require you to glide down and ride the air current back up, which means you’ll end up paying for a teleport out an awful lot until you earn that mastery.

As for the story, it’s been cool so far–the fallout of the revelation that sylvari are basically dragon minions has caused a lot of chaos and mistrust in the Pact, which makes for a good story–but the fact that so much of the early story is focused on frog people is a little weird to me. Also, there’s no animation whatsoever when they talk, which is a little odd considering the graphical overhaul the Hylek just got. I really like that they’ve shifted away from the awkward talking heads style of cutscenes and gone a more traditional route, with in-world dialog and actual animated videos. I’m sure it’s more work, but it’s really worth it. It’s also nice to have Destiny’s Edge a little more back in the spotlight after showing up only for occasional cameos for the Living World story.

Overall, I think this has seemed like a pretty solid expansion. I’ve seen a lot of negativity flung at it (and I mean more than average for an MMO update, and that’s saying something), and so far I really don’t see why. Yes, it’s different, but if it was just more of the same people would complain about that too. As usual, I’ll be over here, ignoring the haters, enjoying what I enjoy.

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December 7, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: Guild Wars 2

Fear not, I haven’t forgotten my Three Features Every MMO Should Have series! I still have a few more games on my list. Here’s my current go-to, Guild Wars 2.

Weapons determine skills
So I’m supposed to believe that a warrior who has fought with a giant two handed sword his whole career will be able to pick up two hand axes and fight just as effectively with them? With the exact same techniques? Of course not. Every weapon your character picks up should make them fight differently. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this when I first played Guild Wars 2, but I’ve really come to like it. It doesn’t necessarily completely transform my character every time I switch weapons, but it lets me tailor my playstyle a little. For instance, I can decide if I want my necromancer to be more DoT focused or more AoE focused for a given situation by choosing Scepter/Dagger or Staff, respectively.
Lately a lot of MMOs have been taking the easy way out by allowing each class to use only one type of weapon, but that seems a little restrictive, especially since it means you can’t choose, for instance, between sword-and-board and a high DPS weapon.

Accessible quick travel
It has been said that the easiest way to tell if a game was designed around a subscription or a free-to-play/buy-to-play model is its travel. Sub games want to waste your time as much as possible to keep you subscribing as long as possible, whereas free to play games prefer that you connect for as short as possible to keep you coming back. Yes, subscription proponents will tell you it’s so you get a feel for the size of the world or something, but, sorry, I really don’t buy that. Quick travel has become increasingly common in our post-subscription genre, but not all quick travel systems are created equal. Guild Wars 2 has really nailed it with waypoints. There’s no cooldown (seriously, SWTOR? What’s the point of a 6 minute cooldown on quick travel? That’s an annoyance, not a design choice) and the cost to travel is quite reasonable, scaling with your level, and only about 2-3 silver to travel across most of the map at 80. Better yet, waypoints are free within cities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in WildStar’s hub city Thayd and opened the map and tried to waypoint to another part of the city, only to realize I’m in the wrong game. Not only are waypoints incredibly convenient, but they’ve kept unlocking them from seeming like a chore by making them part of the leveling/mapping process.

Trading post anywhere
Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve played where I never run out of inventory space, and I’ve never even bothered to upgrade to the bags with the largest number of slots, or bought the cash shop extra bag unlock. Between deposit all materials and the ability to list stuff on the trading post from anywhere, I’ve never even been tempted to. The bank is another story, but they’ve got to make money somehow I guess. I’ve really been spoiled by this; in other MMOs I often end up just deconstructing or selling gear that I probably could have auctioned because I’m too lazy to haul it all the way back to the hub to sell it. Also nice is that sales never expire in Guild Wars 2, so you don’t have to relist items every forty eight hours like in a lot of games. This has the unfortunate side effect of burying your sale indefinitely if a bunch of people start selling the item cheaper than you, but it’s a lot more convenient to relist items when you think of it at a black lion trader instead of every time your auction timer expires.

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December 1, 2015

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My Black Friday Gaming Haul

Ah, Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Black Week/Black November. It’s a great time for people like me who hate paying full price for anything, especially in the arena of digital games. The theme of this black weekend is apparently Action RPGs. I knew I was in the mood for a good ARPG, but somehow I ended up buying almost nothing but ARPGs this weekend. Here’s are some of the things I picked up for cheap.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD
Wind Waker is one of the few entries in the Zelda series that I somehow missed, which seems to be the consensus among casual Zelda fans like myself. It’s one of those “it sold horribly the first time around, but everyone who actually played it loved it and begged for a remake” games. Personally, I blame the cheezy cell-shaded graphics, which I must admit is a lot of the reason why I didn’t buy the first time around, but I’m told you get used to it, or at least end up putting up with it given how good the gameplay is. If nothing else, it looks a lot prettier on the Wii U than it did on the Gamecube.
Side note: I see they’re now remaking one of my favorite Zelda games, Twilight Princess, for Wii U as well. What I’m a little disappointed by is that it really looks about the same as the Wii version. Maybe they cleaned up the textures a little, but other than that it just looks like someone just running the game at forced 1080p resolution in the Dolphin emulator. Wind Waker actually took the time to update the models and make it feel like an HD remake, but this feels like a cash grab (or at best just something to appease the whining fans).

Marvel Heroes: War Machine
Marvel Heroes had a great Black Friday deal, with 50% off heroes dressed in black (clever), plus a bonus random hero. I’ve had my eye on War Machine since he came out, and so far he’s been everything I had hoped for. I love the independently-firing machine gun; it’s like an always-on AoE, and it’s really nice to not have to chase down that one random guy that always seems to get away when you’re clearing a room. I haven’t decided yet if I want to play him ranged or melee, because he really excels at both. Gazillion did a great job making him feel very different from Iron Man with a few similar abilities. Exactly what War Machine should be.
My free random hero was Silver Surfer, who looks interesting, but I haven’t really messed with him. He wasn’t high on my list of to-play characters, but he was on the list, so I’m happy.

Transistor
I’ve been watching this one for a while now. It’s a new game by the creators of Bastion, and I heard nothing but rave reviews when it came out. It looks fun, and, if nothing else, it’s an absolutely gorgeous game, continuing with Bastion’s hand-painted art style.

Fight The Dragon
This somewhat obscure indie title is marketed as “Diablo meets Little Big Planet.” By that they mean that it’s an ARPG with community-created custom dungeons. I love it when games give users creative freedom, and it was only $3, so I figured I’d give it a shot. It’s really not that good of a game, but the fact that you can download and play other people’s levels makes up for its mediocrity.

Distance
Finally a an ARPG combo breaker. This is a weird little futuristic stunt driving game still in Early Access. Think Trackmania with wings. Apparently it’s a spiritual successor to a freeware game called Nitronic Rush, which I had never heard of before Distance popped up on Steam, but both games look fun to me. I’ve never been in to realistic racing games–I guess that comes from growing up on a steady diet of Mario Kart and Star Wars: Pod Racer–I’d much rather have something like this that bends reality a little. It has a fun EDM soundtrack and an overall Tron: Legacy feel to it. The story mode takes a turn for the creepy early on, which I was not expecting. Overall, well worth my money, even as someone who doesn’t play racing/driving games much.

So that’s the major highlights for my sale shopping. Not bad considering that the grand total for all of the PC games is about $25. Did you pick up any good deals this year?

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November 26, 2015

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I’m Thankful For MMOs

MMO Thanksgiving2As we sit down at the table with friends and family to eat far too much food and try to ignore the annoying football fans and black Friday shoppers, there’s one thing I’m thankful for, but I won’t be listing it during family time because it would confuse Grandma: The MMORPG.

I’ve been playing MMOs since my parents finally upgraded from dial-up to DSL in early 2005. In those nearly eleven years, I’ve spent a lot of time (and money) playing video games, but no genre has given me anywhere near the entertainment value that MMOs have. I’ve spent countless hours across games with a variety of settings, world sizes, and most of them didn’t even cost me money to start. In these virtual worlds I’ve made friends, battled trolls (of both the NPC and Human variety), been a part of communities of every possible size and configuration, and, in short, felt a part of something bigger than myself. Games like StarCraft II and Mass Effect have given me great entertainment value lately, but non-MMO games just don’t give the same feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day.

I’m thankful for patient people along the way that walked me through the awkward noob phases, and I hope I can be that for many other people along the way. I’m thankful for my amazing wife who plays Guild Wars 2 with me and is patient as I try to teach her my favorite genre. I’m thankful for a variety of MMO blogs and news sites that keep me feeling informed about and connected to the greater MMO community, even games I’m not playing anymore.

While we’re at it, let’s remember to be thankful for the wonderful support and development teams that keep these games humming along day after day with surprisingly little interruption. I can say from personal experience that IT can be a high stress job, and game development is one of the highest stress IT jobs out there without the added burden of millions of players expecting everything to run smoothly 24-7. From what I’ve heard, most (if not all) of them could get easier, better paying jobs doing the same thing in another environment, but many of them stay in gaming because they love being part of gaming culture.

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November 24, 2015

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GW2: A Lament for the Scroll of Knowledge

Mourning the Scroll of Knowledge
I really miss skill point scrolls, aka Scrolls of Knowledge. The thing is, I understand completely why they were removed, but I still miss them.

This past summer, as part of the changes to the way skill points and specializations worked in preparation for the new elite spec system, ArenaNet saw fit to change skill points to “hero points.” Hero points allow for a progression of skill points that honestly makes more sense and allows players to customize their class to their liking earlier on, with less wasting points on skills you don’t want just so you can unlock the next tier of skills. It also meant you had to spend hero points on unlocking your specializations, but again, now, if you’re really just interested in one specialization, you can dump all of your points into it and have it earlier on instead of having the specialization tiers unlocked as you level.

There are pros and cons to both systems, but we have the new system now so there’s not much point in worrying about which is better. The point is, when they made the switch to hero points, they removed the Scroll of Knowledge and converted them all to Spirit Shards, and made all activities that gave a Scroll of Knowledge now give Spirit Shards. Previously, players could continue to rake in a continual stream of skill points, which meant that, at some point, they became worthless for unlocking skills. Players could either transfer scrolls to another character, or exchange their unused skill points at a special vendor for Mystic Forge crafting ingredients. Honestly, it was weird that you could spend your skill points in the first place, so I’m not really upset about that. What I am a little annoyed at is the fact that, when I use Tomes of Knowledge to level my characters instead of mapping, they’re now at a disadvantage because, while you get a lot of hero points as you level, you’re still short a bunch. Maybe that’s the point–don’t let people skip the leveling process entirely by grinding a lot on other characters, just the hard part–but it’s still frustrating. Not only that, but my high level characters don’t have nearly enough hero points to train up their elite spec (my mesmer didn’t even have enough for the shield proficiency before they lowered the cost). This sounds like my fault–if this change was made over the summer, clearly I didn’t prepare for the expansion well enough–except that ArenaNet did a really bad job of communicating the fact that elite specs would cost hero points, and a lot of them at that. They did the right thing in reducing the number of points it costs to train you elite spec, previously 400, now reduced down to 250 (for reference, I had maybe 50 extra points at best on any given level 80 character). This solution means you still have a use for those leftover hero points, but those of us without near total map completion won’t have to spend hours in old content just so we can use our shiny new spec.

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November 9, 2015

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StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void Hype!


MY LIFE… FOR AIUR.
Chills. Forget the Warcraft movie, give me a StarCraft movie.

Finally, the game I’ve been waiting for since 2010 is releasing tomorrow. The Protoss have always been by far my favorite race in the StarCraft ‘verse. The Terran-centric Wings of Liberty campaign was ok, but humans in sci-fi are always so predictable; surviving against impossible odds and despite vastly inferior technology because they have more ingenuity and will to live than other races or something. Also, we’re really good at digging up ancient superweapons that everyone else forgot about. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. The Zerg-centric Heart of the Swarm expansion did its best, but I’m both awful at playing Zerg and not very interested in their story. Worth playing once, but I waited until it was on sale to buy it. Plus it spends most of its time undoing everything you did in WoL, so there’s that. Finally we’ve gotten to the Protoss campaign. I think that if the base game would have been centered around the Protoss, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to get the expansions. Protoss are just so much more interesting to me; their technology, their society, their history, and, most importantly, their gameplay. In most RTSes I usually favor smaller numbers of higher powered (and, of course, more expensive) units over large numbers of weak units; high risk for (hopefully) high reward. StarCraft has never been terribly rewarding to the whole “hide out until you can make superweapons” strategy, but the Protoss are the closest you’ll get. Lots of upgrade potential and fun late game units.

I don’t think I’ll be doing much ranked multiplayer this time around. When Wings of Liberty came out I had a lot of friends who played, and ended up getting decently good at online play. By “decently good” I mean I hovered around high bronze to low silver, but that was pretty good for an overworked college student who mostly played on the weekends. When I came back for the HotS expansion, I realized that I was sorely out of practice, and the campaign had taught me bad habits. On top of that, I’ve lost touch with most of the friends I used to play with, so I have no one to discus build strategies with and no one to play against except random matches and AIs. That said, if I found a group of people to play with again, I would be happy to do so.

I’m intrigued at this Nova Covert Ops thing announced this weekend at Blizzcon. From what I’ve read so far, it seems to be a series of small, story-based DLC packs that revolve around Nova, a ghost featured in a Wings of Liberty sidequest arc. Some are speculating that this is a tie-in for a revival of the canceled StarCraft: Ghost FPS that Nova was invented for. Gamers have been bemoaning the shelving of the PS2/GameCube/Xbox game for about ten years now, bordering on becoming Blizzard’s version of “Half-Life 3 Confirmed,” but personally I doubt they have anything in the works beyond small DLCs for SC2, especially with Overwatch on its way. But hey, Duke Nukem Forever came out after spending fifteen years in development, so you never know.

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November 2, 2015

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Revenant Rush

Revlock
I will forever be mystified by the fact that that a cloth blindfold is considered heavy armor. Or, y’know, why they’re a thing at all. I guess it’s like the Miraluka in Star Wars; they don’t need to see because they have magical something-or-other-sight-beyond-somesuch powers. It must be a thing, because WoW’s new Demon Hunter class is getting heavy armor blindfolds as well.

Anyways, this post isn’t about how my character would be totally OP at Major League Pin the Tail on the Donkey, it’s about how I’m loving Guild Wars 2’s new Revenant class. From launch day to today the lower level zones are pretty much wall to wall revenants. Normally it bothers me a little to see a lot of people the same class as me, but right now playing a revenant feels like being a part of the expansion launch hype. Like just about everyone else who preordered Heart of Thorns, I first played the revenant in the beta weekends, and honestly, at first glance, I felt like the class was overcomplicated, specifically the legend system. Why not just give me a mana bar instead of this weird thing that goes to 50% when out of combat and then fills while in combat? And it seemed like each legend had exactly one slot skill that was worth using and that was about it. Well, like just about everyone else who preordered Heart of Thorns (déjà vu), come launch day I rolled a Rev and used a level 20 boost on him. Meet Purifier Unit.
Purifier Unit 35
If you’re among the 99% of gamers who won’t get the reference, the name is a nod to the underrated (and recently re-released on PSN) Mega Man Legends. I thought it was a fun play on words without being terribly immersion breaking. Anyway, I probably should have expected this, but leveling a revenant more naturally, it works a lot better. I still don’t regularly use more than one slot skill per legend, but I’ve come to realize that that’s because they aren’t really meant to be used the way other classes’ slot skills are. In general, two of the skills are situational, and the third is something you can use to burn energy when you don’t need the situational skills. For instance, on the assassin legend, there’s a backwards roll/stun break and a gap closer. The backwards roll is nice since the 2 skill on my favorite weapon, the hammer (which is a ranged weapon for some reason), does more damage at greater distance, and the gap closer is great for melee weapons. But for times when those skills aren’t useful, revenants have a toggle skill that slowly burns energy to speed up both their movement and cooldown timers, meaning they can use those hard-hitting, long cooldown attacks more often. Same story with the dwarf legend: a skill to taunt (that’s right, taunts in GW2, tanking fans rejoice!), one to give stability, and one that drains energy to make a big AoE DoT appear around the revenant in the form of orbiting hammers.

So now comes the dilemma. I really like playing my revenant, so do I level him normally, or use my forty-some tomes of knowledge (“level in a can” items) that I have in by bank to get him most of the way to 80 right now? Or should I use them on a class I don’t like as much? And is it even worth it to level with tomes, since I’ll have to go back through zones anyways to gather tons of hero points if I want my elite spec?

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October 25, 2015

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WildStar Events

Hoverboard RaceAs if to make up for the fact that WildStar hasn’t had a single holiday event in its nearly one and a half years of existence, WildStar is currently running not only its Shade’s Eve Halloween event, but also a Back to the Future themed hoverboard racing event.

I’ll start with the Halloween event. I guess I’m not really that big into Halloween. I mean, I’m looking forward to dressing up in my new Jedi robe and custom lightsaber (both of which I spent way too much money on), but other than that the whole thing is not that exciting to me. So when a game like WildStar gives me outfits out housing decorations that I can really only use in October without them looking out of place, I’m not as thrilled as other times. Christmas stuff I can at least put up in a winter/arctic themed house, or costumes on a character who’s supposed to be in or from a cold place, but I’ve never been tempted to make my character live in a haunted house or a graveyard. That would be depressing, and I don’t think of any of my characters as moping around in a ruined gothic cathedral when I’m logged out. It makes me appreciate games like LOTRO, who comes up with items that don’t look obviously halloween-ish. For instance, my theif wore that Mask of the Raven forever, and I loved the Cloak of Falling Leaves and used it on several characters. I’m sure there are plenty of people that are excited about WildStar’s Halloween giveaways, I’m just not one of them.

Uninviting rewards aside, I did enjoy the holiday dungeon. The maze section was a little bit frustrating, especially the first time, but fortunately they eventually just show you the way out if it takes you too long (and yes, I know from experience). The whole thing has a uniquely WildStar feel to it; the maze and its flickering flashlight and the insane cultists were both very mature horror themes, but Jack Shade and the shadelings that pop up everywhere were so goofy and over-the-top it dispelled any real fear. It was a good call to not only make it an Adventure instance (formerly known as shiphands) that scales to fit parties of one to five players, but also bump all players to 50. I hate it when events like this end up either being something that has no actual combat, which makes them seem disconnected from the rest of the game, or has combat that higher level players just roflstomp all over, while us mid level players have to slog our way through.

Apart from the dungeon is a variety of dailies that take place around your capital city, which hit a good middle ground between giving you something to do and just being a chore. My favorite is one that has you collecting floating plant fibers that turn you temporarily translucent.

WARNING NO ROADSAs for the hoverboard races, I really like what they’ve done with them. Games like LOTRO and Guild Wars 2 have done races before, but usually end up feeling a lot more awkward and gimmicky than what WildStar has put together. And the “WARNING: NO ROADS” notification that pops up when you hit a big jump is just awesome. I love the Back to the Future cosmetics and housing decor; you will definitely be seeing burning tire tracks if you visit my housing plot. It’s surprising how many games did homages to the Back to the Future hoverboard on October 21st. WildStar was unsurprising (they gave away a McFly-style hoverboard as a beta test reward, so we knew they were fans), and I guess Secret World isn’t terribly surprising given its modern setting and its recent inclusion of other, similar mounts, but Star Trek Online came as a surprise (a shame you can only use them on Risa).

DeLorean Hoverboard
I snapped up the limited edition DeLorean hoverboard from the cash shop as soon as it was released. It’s pretty disappointing that, given its $15 price tag, it’s not an account wide unlock, especially since they’re saying they have no plans to ever bring it back. I actually thought maybe it was a typo, but alas it was not. I don’t feel bad about it, though, because I’ve had a lot more fun in WildStar’s free to play in the last few weeks than in a lot of games I’ve sunk a lot more money into, so it’s worth splurging on a cool cosmetic, especially one as awesome as a DeLorean hoverboard.

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October 21, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: Star Trek Online

This is a part of my Three Features Every MMO Should Have series.

Unique space combat
STO Space CombatI know, I know, every game can’t have space combat. What I mean here is that, in a genre where the best way to say what’s unique about a given MMO is to describe how its combat differs slightly from WoW, STO has come up with a completely different (if sometimes a little frustrating) combat system, that is, ship-to-ship space combat. It doesn’t mean you have to throw out traditional MMO combat, but it would be nice to have something different to break things up when combat gets monotonous. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that has done something like this is Star Wars: The Old Republic, albeit a little halfheartedly, with its starfighter combat. I say halfheartedly because SWTOR’s space combat is basically a minigame, but minigames with reasonable rewards are a welcome distraction in my book.

Character creator
Character CreatorI can safely say that Star Trek Online is the only MMO I’ve played where I’ve spent more time in the character creator than in PvE. With enough fiddling on the ridiculous number of face and body sliders, you can make your character look like just about anything you want, especially the design-your-own alien species. I’ve seen some really convincing characters, from various Doctors from Doctor Who to an excellent Na’vi from Avatar to a variety of recreated Star Trek characters, both human and alien. It’s unfortunate that there is a general lack of clothing options for the game. Yes, I get it, Starfleet et. al. are supposed to be military organizations, so realistically there should be one uniform for everyone, the only variance from person to person being maybe a recolor to identify your section, but that wouldn’t go down well in a video game. STO’s sister MMO, the now all-but-dead Champions Online, has a great variety of costume pieces for your superhero (most of the more interesting ones are, of course, locked in the cash shop), but, ironically, I’ve always felt like it could use a little more customization of your actual character. I guess they’re trying to limit your superheroes to human mutants only, but I’d love to play a more exotic-looking hero. Maybe their secret future project will be somewhere in between?

Optional shooter mode
STO ShooterTab target? Action Combat? Why not both? At launch, Star Trek Online’s ground combat was slow, boring, and a bit flaky, especially compared to space combat. Well, it’s still flaky, but when Cryptic overhauled the combat and added shooter mode in 2011 (was it really that long ago? I’m old), it made ground missions a lot more bearable. Since you really only have three weapon skills and a handfull of cooldowns anyway, shooter mode really doesn’t feel like a disadvantage most of the time. The best part is that it’s completely optional, and can be toggled on and off with a single keystroke. There’s even a small damage buff for using shooter mode versus tab targeting, since there’s a chance you can miss targets. I tend to do a lot of combat in shooter mode, then switch to MMO mode when I’m out of combat. It was a little weird when I briefly gave Cryptic’s other MMO, Neverwinter, a try and it was permanently locked in shooter mode. It was kind of a turnoff for me to be honest, but I’m sure there are lots of people who prefer it, and I imagine it makes things easier to develop with one combat mode instead of two.

Side note here: I picked the features I planned on talking about for each game before I even started this series, and, as if they read my mind (or at least my blog notes), Guild Wars 2 has recently announced a system very similar to this one that will be added as part of their Heart of Thorns expansion. I’m excited, because Guild Wars 2 has always seemed like the perfect game for this, since it’s always had something of an action combat flavor to it. Can’t wait to try it out this Friday!