I had heard a lot of positive reactions to this game while it was in development, so I went ahead and got it after it was released into open beta.
Gameplay has been pretty satisfying so far, with the combination of card game and board-based strategy game working together surprisingly well. I know from my own experimentation with making board/grid based card games that it can be very difficult to hit a sweet spot between the board portion being too complex or too simple.
That said, there are some issues:
- There are very few cards in the card pool (135 as of this post), split between three factions. After subtracting the terrible cards and the ones that don't have enough support yet to work correctly, there aren't a whole lot of cards to work with to make a deck. Decks are 50 cards, with max 3-of-a-kind and no lands. As a result, there are only one or two strategies/ sets of cards that are worthwhile for each faction.
- There aren't many gameplay modes to play around in. You can play versus the CPU in quick matches, try a series of customized challenges against the CPU, play quick matches versus other people, or play ranked quick matches against people. There is no limited play (Sealed or draft), no tournaments, no multiplayer, and the ranking system is very bare-bones right now. These things are most likely still in development.
- Apparently its possible to directly trade with other people, but it may not even be enabled yet. Trading is still very much in design.
It was already mentioned a couple of times, but you can't oversell a good thing
Amber by Roger Zelazny
Problem is, once you read it, you'll never be able to enjoy any other fantasy series. Ever.
Yes.
The Chronicles of Amber series is fast paced, action packed, and VERY 70s pulp fantasy.
The main character is an extreme badass facing other extreme badasses in a multiverse spanning conflict. Plus the cover of the version I read looks like this. Its like one of those Old Spice commercials in fantasy novel form.
As far as other books go:
- Never was that into Song of Ice and Fire. I read through the first two books at the insistence of my friends, only to be bored by a plot that plodded along with little of significance seeming to happen. Everyone spends time mucking about with poorly defined goals (beyond, "I'm going to rule Westeros"... eventually) and anyone who dares to get anything done is immediately killed off by Martin. I also got a feeling like Martin's trying too hard to be "gritty"...
- Brandon Sanderson's novels are all very similar. This doesn't mean they're bad, in fact they're quite enjoyable, but they tread a lot of the same ground. He has a tendancy to make all his main characters "gifted" with noble intentions and a single character defining flaw. As a result, his characterization is kinda simplistic.
Vin is a ridiculously overpowered allomancer who has trust issues that define her. Kaladin is a ridiculously overpowered surgebinder who feels guilty about all the people that died while he lived. Those statements are really all you need to know about each character, there's not much else to either of them
On the other hand, Sanderson is great at writing action sequences that feel good to read, and his magic systems are amazingly satisfying.
I'll have to take a look at some of the other books that have been recommended in this thread. My backlog of books I need to read is running low
I've been giving Neverwinter a try too, and I'm pretty impressed so far. I came in with some pretty low expectations from watching a trailer and hearing some of the early feedback regarding the game.
Combat feels good. It reminds me a lot of TERA or Vindictus, in that you attack towards your camera direction, and you use mouse buttons and limited hotkeys. One of my big gripes with games like WoW is that moving your character, hitting hotkeys and moving your camera all at once requires 3 hands (WASD, 1 thru 9 keys, Mouse). This control scheme is definitely preferred, though it gets awkward at times. Only issue I've been having so far has been enemies alternating which is in front of the other, causing me to not be able to attack the one behind. I suppose this could also be considered a feature.
Lots of currencies, and lots of "cash-shop" integration. Gold and Astral Diamonds and 2 types of tokens from your Diety and Zen and gear tokens and so on... the amount of currencies thrown at you from the beginning is intimidating. I still haven't worked out why they have Astral Diamonds in the game. Why do they even exist?
Love the player created mini-dungeons. I've tried a few so far, and people have had some great ideas. Skirmishes are also interesting... you can get into them from anywhere and they allow you and a small group of people to tackle a short encounter (a few minutes long) without it being a full dungeon.
Anyway, I'm having fun so far, but I'm wary of the monetization model as I get further into the game...
I played D3 for a couple of months after it came out, got to Act3 Inferno and lost interest. I agree with Highroller's points above about the game, and have some of my own comments to add. For all of you guys who are still playing D3, feel free to counter if you think my thoughts are totally off.
1. Lack of differences in kind, which is to say that there weren't enough different things to do in the game. You were stuck doing PvM and that's it.
I don't think differences in kind are an issue here (though the gameplay is kind of monotonous). Both MoBAs and FPSs have relatively uniform gameplay where you repeat the same actions over and over across each game you play, but I'd argue that they're both quite engaging. I think the issue is more with the fact that the uniform gameplay you DO experience in D3 is relatively unexciting on average.
Agreed. It was hard to get invested in my character in D3. Appearance wise I looked more or less similar to every other monk playing, and my skill set was fairly well locked in place if I wanted to be strong enough to survive.
3. Lack of rewarding drops. A pinata is not entertaining when there's nothing desirable in it.
Yep. The frequency of desirable drops was very (very) low, particularly in the first few months after the game came out. Plus, due to the auction house, the definition of a desirable drop was something that sold for a lot on the AH. Its inherently less exciting to get something just to sell it than to get something that you can use for yourself as an upgrade.
4. Cheap, fake difficulty. There was a lack of customization to begin with, but when only certain builds were even viable and when the difficulty was outright unfair even to those, the game doesn't work.
I think its more that the game was designed to be very hard later on purely through number scaling.
It feels good to play a game and reach a level of mastery. Being skilled at dodging abilities (skillshots in League of Legends for example) makes you feel awesome as a player. In D3, you build a certain degree of mastery in Normal mode. You learn how to evade the abilities you can evade. As the difficulties progress, you don't gain much in the way of additional mastery over your character. Instead, the game artificially gates your progress through gear/skill builds. In inferno, there wasn't much you could do in terms of player skill after a certain plateau. Instead, you relied on gear upgrades and passive survivability to get you through. Due to there being very little additional mastery to reach, the gameplay ends up feeling samey and unrewarding, even as the loot pinatas explode and you grind your way through.
5. The pace of gameplay of Diablo III is different from Diablo II. Diablo II had carnage coming at you regularly. Diablo III involved boredom until you got an elite pack, in which case stark terror ensued until they were defeated, and then things just resume to falling asleep with your eyes open. It's stop-start gameplay, and it's not engaging.
Add that this that some elite packs in inferno were dramatically harder than others (depending on your class), and you have ridiculous spikes in difficulty that you can only truly mitigate with being more geared. So you have tiresome regular mobs with bad loot, very difficult elite packs with good loot (hopefully) and impossible elite packs that you had to skip. I often felt frustrated... either because I was hitting too few elite packs, I was hitting too many impossible elite packs, or the ones I was killing were dropping junk.
6. Lack of interesting quests that you were forced to play through. As opposed to just being allowed to replay the quests in an open world, you were railroaded to repeating the same moments in a linear storyline. Over and over again. It just doesn't work.
100% yep. Tying together the areas and the quests makes the game feel very uniform. Plus the areas themselves were very predictable due to the type of random generation they used.
I don't actually think the Auction House was a bad idea in theory. Diablo II always had auctions on B.net channels, and this eliminated the annoying spamming of it in the chatrooms, so for Blizzard to provide a means of doing it in game seemed a logical step. However, I do agree that it backfired.
In my mind, the AH doesn't work because it makes trading too convenient...
When you have to sit in chat rooms, spamming all day or looking for good trades it creates a barrier to trading that makes trading its own "grind" and therefore more rewarding when you "succeed". Plus it forces you to evaluate whether it will be more fun/effective to just fight Diablo for that loot you want rather than sit around spamming your trades.
GW2 also has this problem. The auction house is so efficient and effective, and most of the best gear is tradable, that the game becomes more about accumulating money slowly than about getting sweet loot.
As a side note about methods of gaining loot:
There's a very obvious analogy to the loot paradigms of GW2 and D3 vs other games. In GW2 and D3, your goal is to accumulate money slowly over time in order to purchase the items you want. In the real world, we call this WORK.
In other games where loot is either soulbound or difficult to trade with other people, you are reliant on each enemy you kill to have a small chance at a big reward (the item you want). In the real world, we call this GAMBLING (or perhaps, a slot machine). People go gambling for fun because each moment has a sense of excitement and chance. They don't go to work because gaining money incrementally is fun. Gaining money incrementally is samey and boring. There's no built-in excitement.
D3 fails because it (like other games in its subgenre) is relying on its loot system to be fun. Since the moment to moment gameplay is not particularly riveting, it needs to draw you in with its loot system. And the loot system it has feels more like work than gambling.
Also, one last observation and to build off what Coffee said. A lot (all?) of D3's itemization cared about passive stats and bonuses. All you care about when getting a new item is if the exact specific set of stats you need are present and if they are incrementally higher than your current item. This pigeonholing makes it next to impossible to pick up new gear for yourself from drops.
Mixed feelings about TERA... its VERY grindy and had extremely tedious quests. The combat is fantastic though, the BAMs (are they still called BAMs? They were when I played during the beta) got my heart pounding in a way that I haven't experienced in other MMOs recently. I guess since its free you could give it a stab.
As far as the OP goes, I don't know of ANY MMO that fits that description. Runescape is pretty unique on how it treats the crafting/gathering skills on the same level as the combat skills. I think you'll find all other MMOs much more combat heavy.
I remember a group working on a Harvest Moon MMO a few years back. Not sure what happened to it :/
Welcome to GW2
You'll soon find that its both very familiar and very different from other MMOs you may have played.
To answer your questions....
1) The background selections change how your main questline (which is somewhat tailored to the choices you made at the start and will make throughout the game) progresses. The specific missions you do in the first ~30 or so levels are customized depending on what you said.
2) While I've never played a Mesmer, a search of "*class* builds gw2" in google has always worked for me. You'll soon find that without a DPS meter (if you're coming from an MMO that has them) and without any hard enrages or dps races in any of the content (for the most part), there isn't much reason to maximize your DPS.
For levelling content, a sure-fire plan is to focus exclusively on the Power stat, both on your talent tree and on your gear. Later on you can start fiddling with the various utility options until you find what works for you.
3) GW2 has no roles. Sort of. There are no tanks, people pull aggro left and right and its up to your group to evade or CC the opponents in order to minimize damage you all take. There are no healers, each person can heal themselves using their various class abilities.
That said, some classes are inherently tankier than others (Warriors and Guardians) and feel more like traditional tanks with the way they play, Guardians specifically. Also, some classes have a bit more healing, with AoE abilities that heal more than just themselves. Other classes have more CC/Utility and can use it to assist the entire party.
Mesmer is a DPS/CC/Utility focused class.
If you don't mind me asking, what server are you on?
In it, the author trashes the idea of Bitcoins, an online currency independent from any one country's monetary system. Some of the authors points include:
- The lack of a known identity behind the creator of Bitcoins.
- The rapidly fluctuating value of a bitcoin.
- The currency is supposedly widely used by "tax evaders, drug dealers, and terrorists".
- Other digital currencies such as Cybercash have failed.
- No government fall back in the case of currency trouble.
All in all, it seems to be quite an alarmist article, but the thing that struck me and made me want to post it here was actually this excerpt:
Quote from Linked CNN Article »
One of the self-proclaimed largest Bitcoin exchanges is Mt. Gox. The name originally stood for Magic: The Gathering Exchange, an online site designed to trade cards used in playing the card game popular with the younger set. An exchange based on trading kiddy cards does not seem like a sound foundation for a monetary system.
Sort of a good point, but... THAT M:TG BASHING!
So, what are your thoughts about Bitcoin currency? Its certainly risen in value ( I found a post here from 2012 where bitcoins were valued at $8, while they're $100 now according to the article).
Also, was your reception of the article influenced by the reference to M:TG?
I certainly feel like bitcoins are too inherently risky to be a real currency. There's a lack of accountability behind the currency in comparison to those backed by countries. I couldn't bring myself to invest a significant portion of my money in them, for example...
On the other hand, my knee jerk reaction to the article was "this guy is totally paranoid!" probably more due to how he discredited himself in my mind with his reference to M:TG than to anything he wrote.
This game was fun, but very stressful! Playing as scum is a lot harder (at least for me) than playing as town was. Particularly because its a lot less clear what exactly you need to do in thread in order to put your team down the path to winning. It also did not help that my team mates were getting picked off left and right :/
Also... for some reason I was dead set on Stardust being a Vig. It just made sense to me based on the roles I'd seen. But when I redirected him and nothing happened, for some reason that I can't work out now, I just decided that Town must have only 3 power roles. Beats me how I reached that conclusion, but eh. Seeing him pop in on the last Day and reveal his PR after I'd just decided to not redirect was a huge facepalm moment.
I found myself with a lot of questions and no one to ask them to. I think I'll try to get a mentor for my next game in case I get a scum role again.
Does anyone have any particular suggestions/tips for how I could have used my redirect on the last 2 days, knowing what I'd know at the time?
That day 3 and start of day 4 were leading down the only path that could result in a town loss.
I was going into Day 3 stressing out about how I could get 3 specific mislynches (Stardust, bebo, Misting) in a row without being obviously scummy and coming up with no good ideas. Then when I checked the thread for the first time after Day 3 started: Free mislynch and N3.
If anyone has feedback for me, it'd be greatly appreciated, as always.
Obviously your read on me was spot on from the get-go, so there's that! It seemed to me that you were often on the right track with your reads, but you didn't pressure people as hard as the more experienced players. I felt like I got off light after your initial case on me, for example.
I learned a lot this game, but felt really boxed in by the speed of the game and the fact that I couldn't post during the day when most other people were posting.
I've got some more comments, but they'll have to wait until I get off work this evening.
And then there's this exchange where I actively try to get PG lynched before he can claim, therefore suppressing his chance to get a town PR to counterclaim:
I believe you pushed PG purposefully for town credit once you saw DYH was onto him. You were content to let him lurk and not attract attention, but as soon as DYH caught on to his behavior you joined in to get something out of his lynch. Your insistence to lynch him before he can post or claim only shows me that you had absolutely no doubt as to his alignment, something only scum would know for sure.
Thanks for the detail, Cellion. I'm obviously still not convinced that Seppel is town, but what do you think of W_G? I feel like it's more worthwhile going after him today based on his interactions with PG and the fact that the night actions that I know of were odd (ie: not something Seppel would do, I think).
I currently have him as leaning town. There were a couple of things I did not like from him (The way he used "that's just my meta" to refute points against him comes to mind), but mostly he has had good analysis and questions. I see your point regarding PG defending Wheat, but it looks more like PG trying to buddy onto a familiar player than anything else. That said, Caex's post earlier today regarding W_G's contradiction is totally on the ball and I'm interested to see W_G's response.
Cellion, could you please complete your wagon analysis thoughts? Do you think this is foolproof? Who on the wagons do you think is/are scum and why?
Apologies for the delay in getting to this question Stardust, I had a hectic week last week and never got a solid enough chunk of time together to check in, answer your question, and follow up on my own questions.
Of the five of them, at the time Yanni stood out the most to me as very erratic, and his formatting arguments against you didn't make much sense. At the time I would have said that Yanni was most likely to be scum, but I didn't feel strongly enough about that read to make a point of it.
I certainly don't think analyzing wagons is foolproof, but I think its extremely rare for scum to not try to push a good looking wagon. Additionally, AGs wagon's speed led me to think there must be scum trying to quickly push for a lynch/claim before we had much of a chance to ask AG any questions.
Looking at that wagon now, I'm seeing two scum on it: PG and Seppel. See just below for my case on Seppel...
Around half way through Day 1 I had Seppel pegged as town. He was extremely active and it felt like he was asking a lot of good questions. However, ever since Seppel refused to answer my question for him wrt unvoting (Why the back and forth on my alignment with no explanation), I've been paying close attention to the posts he's been making and have gone back to really look at what he'd done in Day 1.
What I found looking back through Seppel's play in Day 1, what I found was:
He flips back and forth on his alignment reads without explaining why. (#170, #367)
He rarely follows up on questions, never explains any conclusions he may have drawn from them. If any go unanswered, he doesn't revisit them or hold people to answering them, showing that they don't really matter, they're just there to look busy. Questions in #47(Misting fails to respond to this question, and Seppel never follows up.), #101(Asks a question to Stardust, but never comments on his response), #358(Asks me a question, doesn't even care about my response)
Votes for people as soon as someone makes a case against them, rarely asks his own questions, unvotes people without reasons. #101 (100% Echoes Yanni to vote PG. note that the vote on PG is dropped in 4 posts without pursuing it any further), #105 (Naked vote on Stardust immediately after W_G makes a case against him), #140, #189, #195 (Silver points out that AG has been active lurking, immediate switch to AG), etc...
Rides the town's opinion, trying to blend in.
Throughout most of Day1, Seppel is actively lurking, voting absolutely anything that anyone makes a case on, and generally not analyzing anything.
When you said, "He jumps in and starts something, then ducks out and lets others do the dirty work (Misting's wagon, for example), then starts something else," I just nodded and said to myself, "Yeah, that is what I do."
Early D1, I'm a catalyst. I try to get people to explode. When I back off, it's because I want to see how other people behave without my contamination. If I step in and get in an argument with someone, it doesn't do me as good as it would be if that argument were between two other people. It's for this reason that I much prefer replacing in.
After there's been a good load of content from everyone, I look back, and attempt to reconstruct the pieces. We're nearing about 500 posts, which is a good point to review the wake. I'll be doing that shortly.
In other words, I do everything for a reason. I just don't know what that reason is yet.
This explanation does not reflect his actual actions. He voted people based on other people's reasoning, but changed his vote before any significant pressure was applied (sometimes even before the voted person in question got to respond). This is just an elaborate excuse to actively lurk while still having votes on everyone and their mother.
So I read through your posts in Basic #68, your most recent town game, and you were making constant new player posts there too (Asking what a loaded question is, or what coaching is , or a bunch of other terms in #46 which was also a town game)
No scum games as far as I can tell, so nothing to compare to. Not much I can take out of this other than an assurance that you're playing consistently.
I also reread your posts this game, and I really didn't pick up on anything beyond what I saw before. You've been posting pretty sparsely and while you have some posts that merely confirm or ask questions about the basics of Mafia (#381 and #134), your other posts look pretty townie.
Also, whats your read on Seppel right now?
As a reminder 22bebo, please answer the question I left for you above when you finally catch up.
@Cellion, your claim had nothing to do with me unvoting. How could it? You claimed vanilla. I never should have been voting you in the first place.
Just a thought, though. If I was scum, shouldn't I have pushed you to get two more votes rather than bringing you back down to L-3? It would have been pretty easy to default to the leading questions and the twisting of words and the prodding of people with short questions. But that's not really why I thought you were scum. The fact that Seppel thinks you're scum for those reasons makes me uneasy though. Those reasons haven't changed. As far as I'm concerned, Seppel should still be voting for you.
I don't know why scum would unvote, but I know that town wouldn't barring a reason not associated with the claim itself. You're bringing up a "I wouldn't do this if I were scum" argument, which is never valuable.
- What were the interactions with AG that made you change your mind?
They didn't make me change my mind. They made me think you were scum buddies, which clearly can't be the case if he's town. That was my logic fail. Anyway, it was this one, this one and this one. Maybe more, but that was just a quick skim. Basically, there were no interactions between you two that didn't either feel like bussing or coaching to me.
I think you should be posting your full role PM too. There's no reason not to get as much info as possible (and force the scum to do more work with fake claims), but it's not super important and I seem to be the only one who cares, so I'm not going to spam the thread to get it. AG is more important though since his PM has more words.
By the logic you present later on in your back and forth with Seppel, a VT's role PM is more important because it can be confirmed by other VTs. The extra words in a claimed Doc's PM can't be confirmed because there isn't anything to compare against. So why does AG's role PM having more words make it more important?
@22bebo:
So I read through your posts in Basic #68, your most recent town game, and you were making constant new player posts there too (Asking what a loaded question is, or what coaching is , or a bunch of other terms in #46 which was also a town game)
No scum games as far as I can tell, so nothing to compare to. Not much I can take out of this other than an assurance that you're playing consistently.
I also reread your posts this game, and I really didn't pick up on anything beyond what I saw before. You've been posting pretty sparsely and while you have some posts that merely confirm or ask questions about the basics of Mafia (#381 and #134), your other posts look pretty townie.
I assume that's an X-Men Sentinel, and not some other sentinel?
Yep, thats the one.
So Stardust and Seppel snap unvoting me after my claim felt off. If they're town and if they really thought I was scum a claim of VT shouldn't have done anything to sway them to unvote. The only people who believe a VT claim at face value are extremely new players, and neither of them are that. As a result, I expected to see good reasons for the unvote, but what I got was lacking.
Sure. The first time I really considered it is post 178, when you unvoted me. The one thing I do know well in this game is playing as scum. I felt like you were looking for a new target more than you were looking to reread.
Then in your next post, you follow me onto 22bebo's wagon. It felt to me like a bus, especially after I realised you could have said the same thing as I did, but earlier. I suppose I should say thank you, though, for making me do this. More and more I'm thinking 22bebo is town, which (if right) means this can't be a bus. What this doesn't feel like is a wagon jump towards a mislynch... Hmm...
That plus your interactions with AtheistGod led me to believe you're scum, but I never thought about it far enough to realise that's really stupid, especially so now that AGod is basically confirmed town as well. You're not necessarily town, but I'm no longer sure you're scum. Unvote. Sorry for not thinking critically about my vote before placing it.
The reasoning presented with the unvote is basically "I didn't think the interactions through before voting you" which reflects some pretty reckless voting. Additionally, you're pretty non-specific about what interactions you reflected on that led you to the unvote.
That said, with the speed at which this game is moving (pretty fast by my standards) I can see how you could have just went with your previous observations as town!Stardust...
A couple of questions:
- What were the interactions with AG that made you change your mind?
- Why did you want AG to post his full role PM?
@Seppel:
While Stardust explained the reasoning behind his unvote, you didn't clarify at all. Instead, we have a full 180 from:
Also, Cellion, can you explain why your vote is still on me?
My intention is still to reread you properly to confirm my town impression of your Void case. In the context of you being a new player, your vote on Void makes sense to me as a town action (Newbies feel pressured by more experienced player to "play properly", in this case to be more free with their vote).
On the other hand, it was brought up that you've played in quite a few games before this one, making it possible that the new player vibes you've been giving off this game are just an act. I'll be checking your past few town/scum games specifically to check how much you acted "new" as each alignment (and if there was a difference, of course).
Regardless, I'm thinking you're more likely town than scum right now, and I don't want another speed wagon to bring you to claim between chances I get to post, so Unvote.
I decided to examine Stardust's wagon. Wheat and Seppel seemed like they were mostly just applying pressure, which is +town. This post, though, marks the third vote on the wagon, and the point at which the wagon picked up speed. These questions that Cellion asked of Stardust read as very leading to me. At the time of the questions being asked, I noted that they are open-ended and subject to twisting, and sure enough, upon receiving his answers, Cellion makes the replies out to sound worse than they actually are.
For example, Cellion's attack on the use of meta. Just because one doesn't trust in meta as the end-all-be-all doesn't mean that it isn't a tool that can be used. I don't dislike Stardust's reply here, honestly. I also think that Cellion's attack on the word "bonus" is bogus, here. Stardust's intent seems to be that he thinks Misting is scum, and upon doing research (+town), he discovers that Misting's No Lynch RVS vote lines up with a prior game (meta). Saying that this is a "bonus argument" against Misting does not seem scummy to me. Maybe a poor choice of words, but I don't see scum intent behind it. Stardust was trying to scumhunt, and got jumped on for it.
Vote Cellion x2.
Silver, I didn't comment on your case initially because it did not contain any questions directed at me. Additionally, I didn't think (and still don't think) that my questions were leading, nor do I see how I twisted Stardust's response, which I found to be evasive and contradictory to his earlier actions.
Since I didn't think the case was any good, and since you were more or less confirmed town with the double-vote (and therefore not trying on purpose to mislynch me), I ignored it. I'm confused what other people have seen in it to agree with it.
My wagon built up very quickly after AG's claim, so I would expect to find a scum on it to push a potential mislynch. Unfortunately it contains only confirmed townies and people who have been behaving very townie so far(and AG, who looks to be town regardless of his behavior), so I'm not sure what to think of it.
Since I'm at L-2, I'll claim:
I'm Sentinel, Town Vanilla
I'll take another look at Seppel and Stardust, but I feel that this is just town-on-town action. In the mean time, I'd appreciate if the people voting me could present their reasoning. Silver (and probably AG) should go last to prevent potential barning of the confirmed townie.
/barn, since it's more or less what I was thinking. The other thing that stuck out to me is that most of his reads seem non-committal, or are worded to leave open a quick switch to voting that person.
Cellion, this is old, but I just noticed this from Seppel's quote. If you were already thinking these things about 22bebo (along with more that I didn't mention in my first post on him) why didn't you say anything about it beforehand?
I noticed 22bebo's non-committal stances on players and the L-2 question feeling out of place during my reread the night before but didn't have time to write up a post about it until my lunch break the following day (at which point you'd basically brought up the same thing).
Gameplay has been pretty satisfying so far, with the combination of card game and board-based strategy game working together surprisingly well. I know from my own experimentation with making board/grid based card games that it can be very difficult to hit a sweet spot between the board portion being too complex or too simple.
That said, there are some issues:
- There are very few cards in the card pool (135 as of this post), split between three factions. After subtracting the terrible cards and the ones that don't have enough support yet to work correctly, there aren't a whole lot of cards to work with to make a deck. Decks are 50 cards, with max 3-of-a-kind and no lands. As a result, there are only one or two strategies/ sets of cards that are worthwhile for each faction.
- There aren't many gameplay modes to play around in. You can play versus the CPU in quick matches, try a series of customized challenges against the CPU, play quick matches versus other people, or play ranked quick matches against people. There is no limited play (Sealed or draft), no tournaments, no multiplayer, and the ranking system is very bare-bones right now. These things are most likely still in development.
- Apparently its possible to directly trade with other people, but it may not even be enabled yet. Trading is still very much in design.
If you want to learn more, both the forums and wiki here are good resources:
http://www.scrollsfans.com/
Yes.
The Chronicles of Amber series is fast paced, action packed, and VERY 70s pulp fantasy.
The main character is an extreme badass facing other extreme badasses in a multiverse spanning conflict. Plus the cover of the version I read looks like this. Its like one of those Old Spice commercials in fantasy novel form.
As far as other books go:
- Never was that into Song of Ice and Fire. I read through the first two books at the insistence of my friends, only to be bored by a plot that plodded along with little of significance seeming to happen. Everyone spends time mucking about with poorly defined goals (beyond, "I'm going to rule Westeros"... eventually) and anyone who dares to get anything done is immediately killed off by Martin. I also got a feeling like Martin's trying too hard to be "gritty"...
- Brandon Sanderson's novels are all very similar. This doesn't mean they're bad, in fact they're quite enjoyable, but they tread a lot of the same ground. He has a tendancy to make all his main characters "gifted" with noble intentions and a single character defining flaw. As a result, his characterization is kinda simplistic.
I'll have to take a look at some of the other books that have been recommended in this thread. My backlog of books I need to read is running low
Combat feels good. It reminds me a lot of TERA or Vindictus, in that you attack towards your camera direction, and you use mouse buttons and limited hotkeys. One of my big gripes with games like WoW is that moving your character, hitting hotkeys and moving your camera all at once requires 3 hands (WASD, 1 thru 9 keys, Mouse). This control scheme is definitely preferred, though it gets awkward at times. Only issue I've been having so far has been enemies alternating which is in front of the other, causing me to not be able to attack the one behind. I suppose this could also be considered a feature.
Lots of currencies, and lots of "cash-shop" integration. Gold and Astral Diamonds and 2 types of tokens from your Diety and Zen and gear tokens and so on... the amount of currencies thrown at you from the beginning is intimidating. I still haven't worked out why they have Astral Diamonds in the game. Why do they even exist?
Love the player created mini-dungeons. I've tried a few so far, and people have had some great ideas. Skirmishes are also interesting... you can get into them from anywhere and they allow you and a small group of people to tackle a short encounter (a few minutes long) without it being a full dungeon.
Anyway, I'm having fun so far, but I'm wary of the monetization model as I get further into the game...
I don't think differences in kind are an issue here (though the gameplay is kind of monotonous). Both MoBAs and FPSs have relatively uniform gameplay where you repeat the same actions over and over across each game you play, but I'd argue that they're both quite engaging. I think the issue is more with the fact that the uniform gameplay you DO experience in D3 is relatively unexciting on average.
Agreed. It was hard to get invested in my character in D3. Appearance wise I looked more or less similar to every other monk playing, and my skill set was fairly well locked in place if I wanted to be strong enough to survive.
Yep. The frequency of desirable drops was very (very) low, particularly in the first few months after the game came out. Plus, due to the auction house, the definition of a desirable drop was something that sold for a lot on the AH. Its inherently less exciting to get something just to sell it than to get something that you can use for yourself as an upgrade.
I think its more that the game was designed to be very hard later on purely through number scaling.
It feels good to play a game and reach a level of mastery. Being skilled at dodging abilities (skillshots in League of Legends for example) makes you feel awesome as a player. In D3, you build a certain degree of mastery in Normal mode. You learn how to evade the abilities you can evade. As the difficulties progress, you don't gain much in the way of additional mastery over your character. Instead, the game artificially gates your progress through gear/skill builds. In inferno, there wasn't much you could do in terms of player skill after a certain plateau. Instead, you relied on gear upgrades and passive survivability to get you through. Due to there being very little additional mastery to reach, the gameplay ends up feeling samey and unrewarding, even as the loot pinatas explode and you grind your way through.
Add that this that some elite packs in inferno were dramatically harder than others (depending on your class), and you have ridiculous spikes in difficulty that you can only truly mitigate with being more geared. So you have tiresome regular mobs with bad loot, very difficult elite packs with good loot (hopefully) and impossible elite packs that you had to skip. I often felt frustrated... either because I was hitting too few elite packs, I was hitting too many impossible elite packs, or the ones I was killing were dropping junk.
100% yep. Tying together the areas and the quests makes the game feel very uniform. Plus the areas themselves were very predictable due to the type of random generation they used.
In my mind, the AH doesn't work because it makes trading too convenient...
When you have to sit in chat rooms, spamming all day or looking for good trades it creates a barrier to trading that makes trading its own "grind" and therefore more rewarding when you "succeed". Plus it forces you to evaluate whether it will be more fun/effective to just fight Diablo for that loot you want rather than sit around spamming your trades.
GW2 also has this problem. The auction house is so efficient and effective, and most of the best gear is tradable, that the game becomes more about accumulating money slowly than about getting sweet loot.
As a side note about methods of gaining loot:
There's a very obvious analogy to the loot paradigms of GW2 and D3 vs other games. In GW2 and D3, your goal is to accumulate money slowly over time in order to purchase the items you want. In the real world, we call this WORK.
In other games where loot is either soulbound or difficult to trade with other people, you are reliant on each enemy you kill to have a small chance at a big reward (the item you want). In the real world, we call this GAMBLING (or perhaps, a slot machine). People go gambling for fun because each moment has a sense of excitement and chance. They don't go to work because gaining money incrementally is fun. Gaining money incrementally is samey and boring. There's no built-in excitement.
D3 fails because it (like other games in its subgenre) is relying on its loot system to be fun. Since the moment to moment gameplay is not particularly riveting, it needs to draw you in with its loot system. And the loot system it has feels more like work than gambling.
As far as the OP goes, I don't know of ANY MMO that fits that description. Runescape is pretty unique on how it treats the crafting/gathering skills on the same level as the combat skills. I think you'll find all other MMOs much more combat heavy.
I remember a group working on a Harvest Moon MMO a few years back. Not sure what happened to it :/
You'll soon find that its both very familiar and very different from other MMOs you may have played.
To answer your questions....
1) The background selections change how your main questline (which is somewhat tailored to the choices you made at the start and will make throughout the game) progresses. The specific missions you do in the first ~30 or so levels are customized depending on what you said.
2) While I've never played a Mesmer, a search of "*class* builds gw2" in google has always worked for me. You'll soon find that without a DPS meter (if you're coming from an MMO that has them) and without any hard enrages or dps races in any of the content (for the most part), there isn't much reason to maximize your DPS.
For levelling content, a sure-fire plan is to focus exclusively on the Power stat, both on your talent tree and on your gear. Later on you can start fiddling with the various utility options until you find what works for you.
3) GW2 has no roles. Sort of. There are no tanks, people pull aggro left and right and its up to your group to evade or CC the opponents in order to minimize damage you all take. There are no healers, each person can heal themselves using their various class abilities.
That said, some classes are inherently tankier than others (Warriors and Guardians) and feel more like traditional tanks with the way they play, Guardians specifically. Also, some classes have a bit more healing, with AoE abilities that heal more than just themselves. Other classes have more CC/Utility and can use it to assist the entire party.
Mesmer is a DPS/CC/Utility focused class.
If you don't mind me asking, what server are you on?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/opinion/angel-bitcoin-currency/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
In it, the author trashes the idea of Bitcoins, an online currency independent from any one country's monetary system. Some of the authors points include:
- The lack of a known identity behind the creator of Bitcoins.
- The rapidly fluctuating value of a bitcoin.
- The currency is supposedly widely used by "tax evaders, drug dealers, and terrorists".
- Other digital currencies such as Cybercash have failed.
- No government fall back in the case of currency trouble.
All in all, it seems to be quite an alarmist article, but the thing that struck me and made me want to post it here was actually this excerpt:
Sort of a good point, but... THAT M:TG BASHING!
So, what are your thoughts about Bitcoin currency? Its certainly risen in value ( I found a post here from 2012 where bitcoins were valued at $8, while they're $100 now according to the article).
Also, was your reception of the article influenced by the reference to M:TG?
I certainly feel like bitcoins are too inherently risky to be a real currency. There's a lack of accountability behind the currency in comparison to those backed by countries. I couldn't bring myself to invest a significant portion of my money in them, for example...
On the other hand, my knee jerk reaction to the article was "this guy is totally paranoid!" probably more due to how he discredited himself in my mind with his reference to M:TG than to anything he wrote.
Also... for some reason I was dead set on Stardust being a Vig. It just made sense to me based on the roles I'd seen. But when I redirected him and nothing happened, for some reason that I can't work out now, I just decided that Town must have only 3 power roles. Beats me how I reached that conclusion, but eh. Seeing him pop in on the last Day and reveal his PR after I'd just decided to not redirect was a huge facepalm moment.
I found myself with a lot of questions and no one to ask them to. I think I'll try to get a mentor for my next game in case I get a scum role again.
Does anyone have any particular suggestions/tips for how I could have used my redirect on the last 2 days, knowing what I'd know at the time?
OMG!
Vote Seppel because *insert terrible reason here*
I was going into Day 3 stressing out about how I could get 3 specific mislynches (Stardust, bebo, Misting) in a row without being obviously scummy and coming up with no good ideas. Then when I checked the thread for the first time after Day 3 started: Free mislynch and N3.
Obviously your read on me was spot on from the get-go, so there's that! It seemed to me that you were often on the right track with your reads, but you didn't pressure people as hard as the more experienced players. I felt like I got off light after your initial case on me, for example.
Iso, where was the Dai-Normand Lagann?
I learned a lot this game, but felt really boxed in by the speed of the game and the fact that I couldn't post during the day when most other people were posting.
I've got some more comments, but they'll have to wait until I get off work this evening.
I believe you pushed PG purposefully for town credit once you saw DYH was onto him. You were content to let him lurk and not attract attention, but as soon as DYH caught on to his behavior you joined in to get something out of his lynch. Your insistence to lynch him before he can post or claim only shows me that you had absolutely no doubt as to his alignment, something only scum would know for sure.
I currently have him as leaning town. There were a couple of things I did not like from him (The way he used "that's just my meta" to refute points against him comes to mind), but mostly he has had good analysis and questions. I see your point regarding PG defending Wheat, but it looks more like PG trying to buddy onto a familiar player than anything else. That said, Caex's post earlier today regarding W_G's contradiction is totally on the ball and I'm interested to see W_G's response.
Apologies for the delay in getting to this question Stardust, I had a hectic week last week and never got a solid enough chunk of time together to check in, answer your question, and follow up on my own questions.
Of the five of them, at the time Yanni stood out the most to me as very erratic, and his formatting arguments against you didn't make much sense. At the time I would have said that Yanni was most likely to be scum, but I didn't feel strongly enough about that read to make a point of it.
I certainly don't think analyzing wagons is foolproof, but I think its extremely rare for scum to not try to push a good looking wagon. Additionally, AGs wagon's speed led me to think there must be scum trying to quickly push for a lynch/claim before we had much of a chance to ask AG any questions.
Looking at that wagon now, I'm seeing two scum on it: PG and Seppel. See just below for my case on Seppel...
Around half way through Day 1 I had Seppel pegged as town. He was extremely active and it felt like he was asking a lot of good questions. However, ever since Seppel refused to answer my question for him wrt unvoting (Why the back and forth on my alignment with no explanation), I've been paying close attention to the posts he's been making and have gone back to really look at what he'd done in Day 1.
What I found looking back through Seppel's play in Day 1, what I found was:
- He flips back and forth on his alignment reads without explaining why. (#170, #367)
- He rarely follows up on questions, never explains any conclusions he may have drawn from them. If any go unanswered, he doesn't revisit them or hold people to answering them, showing that they don't really matter, they're just there to look busy. Questions in #47(Misting fails to respond to this question, and Seppel never follows up.), #101(Asks a question to Stardust, but never comments on his response), #358(Asks me a question, doesn't even care about my response)
- Votes for people as soon as someone makes a case against them, rarely asks his own questions, unvotes people without reasons. #101 (100% Echoes Yanni to vote PG. note that the vote on PG is dropped in 4 posts without pursuing it any further), #105 (Naked vote on Stardust immediately after W_G makes a case against him), #140, #189, #195 (Silver points out that AG has been active lurking, immediate switch to AG), etc...
- Rides the town's opinion, trying to blend in.
Throughout most of Day1, Seppel is actively lurking, voting absolutely anything that anyone makes a case on, and generally not analyzing anything.Also specific posts that tipped me off:
Not waiting in case of a counterclaim shows that he knows AG is town.
Vote on bebo. "I cant be wrong 3 times" shows that he knows that AG and I are town.
This explanation does not reflect his actual actions. He voted people based on other people's reasoning, but changed his vote before any significant pressure was applied (sometimes even before the voted person in question got to respond). This is just an elaborate excuse to actively lurk while still having votes on everyone and their mother.
vote: Seppel
As a reminder 22bebo, please answer the question I left for you above when you finally catch up.
When? And why the delay?
I don't know why scum would unvote, but I know that town wouldn't barring a reason not associated with the claim itself. You're bringing up a "I wouldn't do this if I were scum" argument, which is never valuable.
Got it, I misunderstood what you meant.
By the logic you present later on in your back and forth with Seppel, a VT's role PM is more important because it can be confirmed by other VTs. The extra words in a claimed Doc's PM can't be confirmed because there isn't anything to compare against. So why does AG's role PM having more words make it more important?
@22bebo:
So I read through your posts in Basic #68, your most recent town game, and you were making constant new player posts there too (Asking what a loaded question is, or what coaching is , or a bunch of other terms in #46 which was also a town game)
No scum games as far as I can tell, so nothing to compare to. Not much I can take out of this other than an assurance that you're playing consistently.
I also reread your posts this game, and I really didn't pick up on anything beyond what I saw before. You've been posting pretty sparsely and while you have some posts that merely confirm or ask questions about the basics of Mafia (#381 and #134), your other posts look pretty townie.
Also, whats your read on Seppel right now?
Yep, thats the one.
So Stardust and Seppel snap unvoting me after my claim felt off. If they're town and if they really thought I was scum a claim of VT shouldn't have done anything to sway them to unvote. The only people who believe a VT claim at face value are extremely new players, and neither of them are that. As a result, I expected to see good reasons for the unvote, but what I got was lacking.
@Stardust:
The reasoning presented with the unvote is basically "I didn't think the interactions through before voting you" which reflects some pretty reckless voting. Additionally, you're pretty non-specific about what interactions you reflected on that led you to the unvote.
That said, with the speed at which this game is moving (pretty fast by my standards) I can see how you could have just went with your previous observations as town!Stardust...
A couple of questions:
- What were the interactions with AG that made you change your mind?
- Why did you want AG to post his full role PM?
@Seppel:
While Stardust explained the reasoning behind his unvote, you didn't clarify at all. Instead, we have a full 180 from:
To:
What changed for you?
My intention is still to reread you properly to confirm my town impression of your Void case. In the context of you being a new player, your vote on Void makes sense to me as a town action (Newbies feel pressured by more experienced player to "play properly", in this case to be more free with their vote).
On the other hand, it was brought up that you've played in quite a few games before this one, making it possible that the new player vibes you've been giving off this game are just an act. I'll be checking your past few town/scum games specifically to check how much you acted "new" as each alignment (and if there was a difference, of course).
Regardless, I'm thinking you're more likely town than scum right now, and I don't want another speed wagon to bring you to claim between chances I get to post, so Unvote.
This is an audacious/risky claim for scum, and it should be easy to either counter-claim now or over the next few Days if it isn't legitimate.
Sure if you want me to:
Silver, I didn't comment on your case initially because it did not contain any questions directed at me. Additionally, I didn't think (and still don't think) that my questions were leading, nor do I see how I twisted Stardust's response, which I found to be evasive and contradictory to his earlier actions.
Since I didn't think the case was any good, and since you were more or less confirmed town with the double-vote (and therefore not trying on purpose to mislynch me), I ignored it. I'm confused what other people have seen in it to agree with it.
My wagon built up very quickly after AG's claim, so I would expect to find a scum on it to push a potential mislynch. Unfortunately it contains only confirmed townies and people who have been behaving very townie so far(and AG, who looks to be town regardless of his behavior), so I'm not sure what to think of it.
Since I'm at L-2, I'll claim:
I'm Sentinel, Town Vanilla
I'll take another look at Seppel and Stardust, but I feel that this is just town-on-town action. In the mean time, I'd appreciate if the people voting me could present their reasoning. Silver (and probably AG) should go last to prevent potential barning of the confirmed townie.
I noticed 22bebo's non-committal stances on players and the L-2 question feeling out of place during my reread the night before but didn't have time to write up a post about it until my lunch break the following day (at which point you'd basically brought up the same thing).