I want The Division

I mean just check out this trailer.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Dean Dodrill has done an amazing thing with Dust. As a game developed almost entirely by a single individual, he has really done a good job of creating a tight combat system, many reasonably well designed levels, and a compelling story with decent humor sprinkled in. On top of all that good design, the artwork is beautiful, and the voice acting is high quality. If you're looking for a high quality side scrolling action game, I highly recommend Dust: An Elysian Tail. It's available on Steam and maybe xbox.

I got my OUYA

I had my OUYA delivered today. I haven't had much time to play with it yet, but I'll post some more about it soon.

Busy Time

As always seems to be the case, my life has been busy. I haven't had much time to play games lately, but I'm hopeful that the future will bring more gaming opportunities. I had a request today to play on a ranked 5s team in LoL this summer, so hopefully I'll make some posts about that. Mostly I just wanted to check in and make a post to prove that I'm still around and still thinking about games occasionally.

Riot released the ARAM queue today. It's pretty good I guess, but it probably should have been released 2 years ago. Still, it's better than nothing.

Also, why do they seem to want to punish players for playing how they want? I recognize that leavers disrupt the games of people who don't want others to leave, but why not encourage good behavior through more rewards? I actually think reasonably good rewards would keep the number of leavers quite low, and wouldn't require Riot to ban or police all the bad leaving behavior. Just my two cents.

Planetside 2

I've played some (more) planetside 2 in the last few days, and there are some things I really like about the game. For one, I like that there are 3 teams fighting over an area, so even if you're pushing one team back easily, you need to be ready in case the other team starts to attack you from behind. Another thing I like about the game is how it includes vehicles, both ground and air, and they are interesting to fly and ride in. FPS gameplay gets pretty old to me pretty quickly, so it's nice that there is some decent variety there. I also like the built in voice communication.

There are lots of things to not like about the game too. For instance, there are heavy cash purchase options, and many of the higher tier upgrades would take months of playing to unlock each one. Either that or I haven't found the right way to quickly earn certifications yet. I don't believe the higher level characters have significant advantage over lower level characters, but you still get a good chance to vary your gameplay by purchasing upgrades. I have one friend that really hates the game, so it's certainly not for everyone. I recommend giving it a try however.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

I must not have been paying very close attention because I don't know exactly when this was announced, but I believe it was today, as much as 3 hours ago. I noticed a twitter message suggesting watching the announcement cinematic. I've embedded that cinematic here below. It seems like the game will be an interesting strategy card game if nothing else, so feel free to check it out at the official web page. I hope it will be a fun game!

League of Draven

I recently bought Draven with some of my IP in an effort to have a new carry that I could play in League of Legends. In the week or so that I've had him and have played him, I've discovered that I really enjoy his play style. The laning phase where you should try to catch his spinning blades gives me an interesting minigame to play on top of the normal lane phase. The other good thing about Draven, is that I've won a bunch of matches with him. I was definitely quite bad when I first picked him up, but I've gotten significantly better with him since. I'm sure there's still a ton of room to improve, but it's fun to have a new hero to play. For your viewing pleasure, here is video of my first game ever with Draven.

Best Sim City User Review

I just found the best user review for the recent Sim City game from EA. Check out the link if you want to read the whole review, but I'll quote some of it here for emphasis:


"I was looking for something new for my computer, when I stumbled upon this game on Amazon and decided, what the heck, lets give it a shot!

I have to say it far exceeds my expectations.

Thankfully, the game never actually loads."

I don't really plan to get Sim City since it requires EA's Origin service, but it's good to see some people actually enjoy it!

Competitive Gaming Reflections

I just went back over my post from a couple years ago and noticed that I largely got it right back then. I provided a list of 3 things that I would add to every online competitive game to make them more enjoyable, and right now I would like to suggest a slight modification to that list to change the emphasis. My new list is as follows:

1. Build in rewards for players that behave well.
2. Provide training(tutorials) for players to encourage good behavior.
3. Humanize other players through lobby or cooperative gameplay.
4. Provide punishment for misbehaving as necessary.

In this new list, I switch my emphasis slightly to leave punishment as the last resort. So many times, we see bad behavior and think, "I should punish him for being mean." It's quite easy to identify bad behavior and focus on dealing with it, however I believe the more important thing is to focus on the good behavior. If you give rewards for being nice to others, and treating them with respect, you are likely to condition your players appropriately. In addition, the majority of players will leave your game with more happiness in their life, not less.

Another useful technique includes the humanizing of other players. Once you realize that everyone else in the game is another human being with a life and emotions, you will be much less likely to insult them and put them down. If I'm going to spend 30-50 minutes of my life with a group of 4 strangers in League of Legends, I would like to feel like I brought some sort of positive experience to their lives and increased their happiness. May we all be better people, even when it comes to our online interactions with people we don't see face-to-face.

One Game a Month

I've decided I want to be more involved in game design in my life. To that end, I'm going to attempt to participate in the One Game a Month program, where many game developers attempt to complete one game in each month of the year. I plan to follow the theme for march, which is "Rogue" and create a rogue-like of some sort. I'm not yet sure what platform I will target, but I do want the game to be electronic. I may just make something quick and easy in python using a command line interface. Or maybe I'll follow this tutorial to create a roguelike using the libtcod roguelike library.

The setting for my rogue-like will be a world invasion of giants that you must defeat, based losely on the futuristic sequel I'd imagine to the recently released movie, Jack the Giant Slayer. I plan to use a lot of procedural generation of content, which is something I have wanted to do for a while. We'll see how far I get in the month, but this is definitely a game I want to do.

Feels Good Man

This game as Sona felt pretty good and made my day.

Dealing with Losing

I've lost a lot in League of Legends. In fact I currently have a losing record. I don't feel the need to disclose my win/loss record at this time, however, I will note that a couple weeks ago I had a winning record. Over the last approximately 2 weeks, I've probably lost 10 out of 15 League of Legends games I've attempted. Yesterday, I had a pretty punishing loss when I played a game as Amumu. I played well the entire game, I kept my team alive in clutch moments and I was everywhere I could reasonably be expected to be (in Bronze I at least). I bought a ton of wards, and I built items to support my team mates. Yet somehow, we still managed to lose in the end. There were a few times I could point at that changed how the game went.

The first point where we could have changed the outcome of the game was probably after we aced the enemy team. 3-4 of us were still up with about 30 seconds left for the other team to respawn. I ran down the middle lane to begin taking down their final tower and inhibitor, but the rest of my team ran back to base to buy items. Had my team members come with me to take out the turret, I bet we would have won because of the lane advantage the inhibitor would have given us.

The last point that we lost was when I went back to buy another giant belt before the final engagement. I told my team that I'd be a second and that they should wait for me. I even pinged for them to retreat in case they couldn't read my writing. Naturally, 3 of my team members ran in to die all alone without doing any real damage to the other team. That sealed our loss. I was sad. Luckily my next game turned out to be a win. Actually, it wasn't even close in my next game. I went something like 12/2/24... as Sona playing support... How do the skill levels of ranked games get so messed up in Bronze? I lost only 2 League points for my loss, but I gained only 6 points for the win. Why can't matchmaking give me a decent match up that will be a close game and help me advance?

As far as dealing with losses, I find that my best solution is to shrug it off, and move on to the next game. Even though losing because of someone else's stupid decision hurts, and it hurts even more when that person blames you for it, I find it best to be gracious and accept responsibility for your mistakes. I guarantee that anyone that loses a game, has not played that game perfectly. You might even lose the game outright through character selection. Let us all have fun while playing, support our team members, and remember that other humans (players) all deserve respect when you interact with them.

Sona Support Game

I've been playing some League of Legends over the past few months. Most of the games have been ranked. Last night, I played a game as Sona, and I got to support Varus in bottom lane. The game ended up being pretty fun for me, despite the times that my team members got mad at me for stealing kills according to them. It's times like this that I hate the "last hit" practice that is often used in games.

Why should one person get greater credit for a kill when clearly that event was a team effort? There are times where a kill might deserve special recognition, but I believe the vast majority of team kills should be recognized as being a kill generated by the team only. I do believe that Guild Wars does a pretty good job of recognizing true contributions to the team goals, though I need to pay more attention to describe what they do. Anyway, here is my Sona game from last night if you are interested:

Diablo III PS4 Problems

So I guess Blizzard announced that they will be bringing Diablo to the Playstation 4. I suppose it is exciting that there is support from such a big developer for such a highly anticipated system, however I can't help but feel a giant "MEH" when I think about it.

Diablo III was quite fun for me when I first got it. I played through the first time very quickly, and then rapidly began playing with a number of my friends. We quickly progressed through the nightmare and hell difficulty levels, and I had a blast the entire time (playing my monk). Then, I thought that the game was really going to pick up. I fully expected to be on the hunt for amazing drops for the next year or two. However, what happened was that I got bored of playing the game.

On inferno, the difficulty gets much greater than any of the other difficulty levels. While I'm okay with a challenge, I think it's silly that the primary challenge is obtaining better stats by collecting items with greater stats on them. Since there are only about 3-5 stats that any character cares about, you are essentially trading up from one set of stats for another, and this is the exact thing about World of Warcraft that doesn't interest me. I don't care if I get 5 more strength from and item, because it doesn't change anything about how I play the game. I want to have interesting things happen when I get new items.

I believe the only thing Diablo III really needs to make it interesting, is to provide some passive abilities, or spell effects as a part of the item system. That way we're not faced with a choice between 50 strength, and 55 strength, but instead we have to choose between 50 strength with passive icebolts, or 55 strength with passive fire bombs. I'll take cool spell effects all day over silly stat points.

Also, I should probably have something to say about console controls, but meh. Diablo has few enough buttons that it'll probably work. I just think the controller will fundamentally change the way you play the game since you won't be targeting like you do with a mouse, and will instead be aiming like you do with a controller. Good luck Blizzard and Sony. I know you will make a lot of money from this partnership, and I hope it's enough to cover your costs, but no more. We should expect better from our game developers.

More Guild Wars 2 sPvP

I've done a little bit more sPvP and I wanted to check in on my blog to say that it is still fun. It is refreshing how easy it is to jump into a match, have a little fun, get some rewards, and then return to real life. Matches last at most 15 minutes, meaning you can be confident you will complete any given match within 15 minutes from the time you start it.

On top of that, the reward system for sPvP actually feels pretty good since they recognize you whether you win or lose at the end and give you points in a nice little pop-up. Most games I've played, I've even one of the top contributor awards for something. That could just happen because my team members aren't very good at standing on capture points, so I get the most credit for doing it, but it still feels rewarding and fun. This is the first MMO that I've actually had fun playing PvP modes casually.

First Impressions on Guild Wars 2 sPvP

I decided a couple days ago that I needed to give the PvP in Guild Wars 2 a try. I mean, they have daily achievements for it, and they probably give you something good in terms of rewards for participating.

It turns out that the daily achievements are super easy to complete. You just play 3 matches, which requires about 30-45 minutes of time, and they play one after the other. You get placed on a team against another team, and most of the games seem to revolve around controlling points on a variety of maps. Of course the real focus is beating up the other guys and keeping yourself from dying.

ArenaNet does a good job of keeping things balanced by upleveling all characters to 80 and giving them a full set of PvP gear that can be used only for PvP. All of your PvP items are unavailable for use outside of PvP. Somehow they manage to still offer item rewards through the use of alternate stat allocations and item runes. These additional items don't fundamentally change the balance of the game mode, but do provide additional variety and a method for rewards beyond just the stats on your profile. Overall the mode seems fun, and I feel like I should play it a lot more.

League of Legends (Ranked)

I know I've talked a lot about how much I dislike League of Legends, and there are still a lot of things that I don't like about the game (and the developer). However, I decided to give the game a shot again after more than a year of not playing it (my last games were in December of 2011) in order to play with my brother who has continued playing occasionally. That means I missed the entirety of season 2 and whatever happened in season 2, including the changes to items and all of the new heroes (I refuse to call them champions any more; they're heroes).

The main thing I noticed about coming back to League of Legends is how toxic the community is. It's really ridiculous that I communicate openly with the team, describing what I don't understand and the things I need help in (items and matchups mostly), only to be flamed incessantly for being the worst <insert hero I'm playing> they've ever seen. Interestingly, after a good 5 games of being flamed, my next game I was complimented as being the best support (Sona) they'd ever seen. Now I don't know what Riot should (or could) do to attempt to solve the problem with the community, but I've never dealt with this kind of abuse in Dota 2. HoN seems to be similarly angry about things.

Anyway, I have played a number of ranked games in the last week or so, and right now my profile reports an Elo of 1151. I recognize this isn't a pro ranking or anything, but I believe that 1200 is roughly the 50% mark, so I'm only slightly below the average of all people who play the game, even after taking a year off. I should also mention that I had only played a single ranked game before last week, so the ban and picking procedure was brand new to me. I do have a real job, and a real social life on top of the games I play, so I probably won't be playing anywhere near as much as other gamers. However, at the present time, I plan to play and stream League of Legends ranked games at least a couple times a week as I get a chance. If I can convince some of my RL friends to play on a team, I might even attempt to coordinate a 5v5 team too.

To give you a taste of how bad I am, here's a ranked game where I played Malphite in the jungle because somehow both sides forgot to ban him.

Bloodline Champions

A couple of my friends told me yesterday that they wanted to make an arena team in Bloodline Champions to play somewhat competitively. A while back, I had bought some starter pack for the game, so I was quite interested by this prospect and told them that I would give it a shot with them. Thus, yesterday, we played 5 of our 10 placement matches required to be placed into a competitive league. We won all 5 matches, which is very encouraging.

In addition, I brought my gaming stream back online using a new streaming tool that I'd be glad to discuss at some point in the future. Maybe I'll even update my streaming tutorial page. Regardless, since I recorded all of the matches, I decided to upload them to my new youtube channel, so you can find the videos there. I also have embedded the first match here.

Guild Wars 2, World vs. World

Guild Wars 2 has a fun game mode called World vs. World or WvW for short. The way it works is everyone from your world (server) can join together and fights against the players from 2 other servers for control of 4 maps. 3 of the maps are called "borderlands" for each of the worlds, where one world spawns in the middle and the others spawn on the edge and fight to control the nodes on the map. The fourth map is called the Eternal Battlegrounds and consists of 3 spawns around the edge of the map along with 3 keeps to control along with 1 castle (bigger than the rest) and many towers and supply camps. Supply camps are worth the fewest points, but they are the only way to increase the amount of supply in your larger buildings. Supply is important, because without it, you cannot repair buildings, build siege units, or upgrade your buildings to have stronger walls and greater defenses. There are NPCs that will help defend points you control, and you can hire more using supply and a small amount of in-game gold (usually only costing silver).

While I think this is really one of the best game modes for PvP in any MMO yet, it's not without issues. Probably the primary issue is when there is a huge player count imbalance between the worlds. It's not immediately clear what the right solution would be to having the wrong number of players from each world, but at least World of Warcraft tried something with Wintergrasp (even if it didn't always work the best). Another issue for WvW is that it split among 4 separate maps, and there doesn't appear to be any easy way to call for help from players on the other maps when you need it. Guild Wars should build in better tools for commanders to communicate with each other in order to organize the war. Even with these weaknesses, I still believe Guild Wars 2 WvW is one of the best PvP and PvE combined game modes I've seen.

Dota 2 Giveaway Ideas

I was just given 5 copies of Dota 2 on Steam that I don't know what to do with. Pretty much all of my friends that are interested in the game already have it, so I was thinking of doing a giveaway to hand them out to people. I'd also like to be able to use this giveaway to increase the visibility of my blog if at all possible, so if you have any ideas how I should do this giveaway, feel free to leave a comment here or send me a twitter message (my twitter link is in the left column at the top).

Jetpack Joyride Controls

Jetpack Joyride is a game that I've played a fair amount on my iPhone. It's a fun game of the single-button style where you move up by pressing the button and down by letting go in order to dodge obstacles that travel from right to left on the screen. The bad part about the iPhone version of this game is that the only place they could put the button was on the screen. That means that part of the screen must be covered by your finger in order to control the game, meaning that part of the screen is not visible when you need to interact with the game. That is a problem since the only way of knowing if there is something to dodge is by looking at the screen, some of which is now covered by the controls.

This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jetpack Joyride as a free download for my Playstation Vita. I thought, "Perfect! Now I can play this game by pressing a button." It turns out that I was wrong in my thought. The only way to press the button in the PS Vita version of Jetpack Joyride is to touch the rear touch pad. While the rear touchpad is a huge improvement over using the screen to cover up your vision, there exists yet another problem. The problem with the PS Vita controls is that it is nearly impossible to hold the device without accidentally touching the rear touchpad. There is no way to configure the controls to be anything else, and so I am left wondering why they didn't just use the 'x' button, or better yet, allow the player to use any of the buttons they want. It couldn't have been that difficult to allow any of the controller buttons to indicate a desire to move in the game.

Please game developers, don't use touch controls when a button will work better. Let me repeat, do not use touch controls when button inputs will work better. Thank you.

Guild Wars 2

In the last 2 weeks, I have played quite a bit of Guild Wars 2. In my opinion, it is currently the best MMO on the market. This post will just be a few brief words about my first experiences with the game. As my highest level character is only 30 (out of 80 levels) and I've played very little of the PvP or WvW game modes, this should not be considered a comprehensive review.

First, the movement controls in GW2 feel very tight and as I would expect based on my experience in playing World of Warcraft, which has perfect MMO movement controls in my opinion. The abilities are on a hot bar from 1 to 0, with a couple other skills mapped to F1-5 and the ` key depending on the profession (class) you are playing. Unlike most other MMOs, you are restricted to only this number of active skills at any given point in time, making it much less obnoxious in terms of key bindings in comparison to others. Keys 1-5 are based on your currently equipped weapon and profession. Key 6 is a healing ability, 7-9 are basic profession skills, and key 0 is an advanced skill.

Weapon abilities unlock as you use the weapon. When you dual wield, the main hand weapon decides skills 1-3 and the offhand decides 4 and 5, while 2 handed weapons come with all 5 abilities. Every profession starts with a healing ability, and can unlock others as they level. The basic ability slots unlock as you level, with abilities costing skill points to unlock. Skill points are earned on level, and can also be obtained through skill point challenges throughout the world. The advanced skill becomes available at level 30, and you can unlock those skills with a larger number of skill points.

Based on your choices during character creation (and some decisions as you progress through the story), your character develops in a personal story with the major characters in the universe. Almost all of the personal story quests develop through well voice acted sequences, with reasonably well lip-synched characters. Then on top of the personal story, each place you travel to in the world has regular events that you can participate in, or choose to leave on your journey. Your character naturally levels down to whatever area you are in, so adventuring remains a challenge even as you gain levels. This also makes it easy to jump in and quest with a friend who is lower level.

To top this all off, there is no monthly fee and the game can be had right now for only $60. If you know me personally and want to play with me, I'm on the Eredon Terrace World.