Posts made by Arkandel

@Coin said in Classic World of Darkness:

I will tell you the same thing I tell everyone who says something like this:

I will help, if you want it.

Have you done Geist yet!

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

2. Since my kid is an EDGELORD, when I asked him "why didn't you just give him 30 for the cheap phone and tell him when he has the better phone, you'll give him the $70 then? Don't pay for promises in cash, kiddo." his response was (basically) WTF DAD YOU THINK I'M A FAILURE, U DONT GET IT, AUGH, BlackVeilBridesMyChemicalRomance!!!

Which of the two of you would teenage @Ghost have sided with?

Love that kid, with all my heart, but he can be so dumb.

When we were teens we all were. It sounds like your son was trying to buy street cred as much as a phone.

Worst case scenario here he spent $70 of your money to learn a life lesson, right?

A piece of advice: The advantage of running a published system is people already know it. One way of running a home-grown system from scratch is you can make it work for a MU*, specifically, as opposed to a table-top RPG.

If you're going to run a hybrid you inherit the disadvantages of both. You'll need a lot of concise documentation so your players aren't in the dark about what they think they know versus what's actually the case in the MU* both for mechanics and theme, for instance. That's a mini-project on its own - if it's a huge long TL;DR wall of text people will skim - and you have to make it worth your potential players' time.

In other words, figure out early where your niche is, who your intended players are and why they'd want to invest in it, and cater to them hard. Once you get enough to gain momentum (and oldbies develop who can then indoctrinate newbies) the game should run much smoother, but the first steps will be the hardest. There's a lot of upfront work involved.

@Tinuviel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

@WTFE There's also the more narrow question: What is the difference between 'a person who plays and enjoys video games' and 'a gamer'? I'm definitely the former.

I've a friend who, during my most intense WoW-playing period to which I had transitioned through Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, etc said he doesn't consider me a gamer because I only play MMORPGs.

@Seamus Conceptually I'd be interested. But I'd also need to know more than just that.

For starters this sounds exciting, I always felt Werewolf deserved a single-sphere game instead of always being that plus-one splat people add at the end of their favorite children.

I think one aspect you could use that hasn't been seen much is a truly territorial aspect for it; while Werewolf is never going to (and shouldn't be) L&L there is potential for harsh and intricate politics which is a different thing we never see; in most MU* it's always sidetracked as packs are very few and focused on doing their own sandbox-y things or taking part in strictly cooperative beat'em up PrPs, so they never really need to look at each other as anything other than sporadic allies.

So adding the Pure to the mix as well, and a real functional metaplot might just mean you're up to something cool there.

As for 'where' ... frankly I don't think it matters very much, so whatever you think is cool.

@Tinuviel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

@Arkandel If I need to use external resources to "optimise" my character, your game is bad.

Well, in WoW's case the game was so complex. There were a lot of factors involved - there's usually a rotation which isn't too hard to figure out but then a lot of other stuff goes into it which aren't immediately obvious to anyone who's not studying the game's 'hidden' mechanics closely.

For example during the first few years there was something called the five-second rule. You had a stat (Spirit) which determined how quickly you regenerated your mana pool, but what the game didn't make clear is that this regeneration took place after you spent at least five seconds from your last cast; so the idea was to try and heal in bursts in order to become more efficient. Casting a heal now, one in 3 seconds and another 3 seconds after that was far worse than waiting 6 seconds to cast three times and wait again. This - or its importance could easily escape even a non-casual gamer, but there were strategies you could follow (healer rotations for example) to let you get away with this without your raid dying.

Even more so, each person had to fit in a larger group - back then raids were 40-large. That meant you had to coordinate all those people in how to defeat bosses, and it's a lot easier to point them all to an out-of-game resource (like a refined guide or a YouTube video) than to explain it over Skype from scratch while the fight's about to happen.

@Coin said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

I'm bad at video games in general, compared with people with patience.

You reminded me of something else. Some people's problem is they voluntarily 'cripple' themselves (I use the quotes for a reason) by refusing to read up on their class online for ways to optimize them.

For example on WoW I was always a superior healer than most because I knew how to build for it; which talents were best for which gear and skills, the best sequences to maximize my mana efficiency, etc... none of which did I have to actually crunch numbers for on my own. It still takes patience and work but it's a different type - it's out of game, checking out forums, looking at raiding logs and figuring where to go from there.

I know people who just won't do this shit, who won't read guides or spend much time outside the game to improve their in-game performance. I'm not saying they're wrong, either.

@Tinuviel The problem is creates a race. Think of a company where everyone gets their lunch break at noon, and suddenly you have people rushing to get there first to 'tag' the resting area for themselves.

It's not sustainable.

@Ganymede said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

I think it is important to consider abandoning using XP or advancement as a carrot for activity. While it can be an incentive to be active, a system that links advancement solely to activity is going to lose a large number of good players who cannot be online all the time.

How does your system handle catching up to oldbies (if it does)?

In other words if you create today and I created three months ago, assuming similar playstyles will you be able to ever close the ability gap between our characters?

12 year old girl told she's 'too seductive' to play chess.

@Tinuviel Even back when I had next to no responsibilities (just a gf, who raided with me) it was hard to keep up with the hardcore players. What do you mean we'll only raid four times a week? What will I do with the other 3 nights?! What, give up after only 4 hours? The boss was at 40%, we were making progress, come ON!

... Then the hardcorest of the hardcores would leave and form another guild which just meant we lost a geared main tank and three good healers... there we go again into the recruiting cycle.

@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

We'd like to announce that (after I forgot the Coder said we should and I just didn't for awhile) NOLA is moving from OPEN ALPHA to OPEN BETA.

What's the change between alpha and beta? Do you guys wipe sheets or do they carry over? Are there new features available?

@Auspice said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

Doing one single thing for an hour straight is hard on me. I don't know how some of you do it.

That's how I felt about raiding on WoW.

Although I had 3-4 hours to spare a few nights a week it was impossible to do it straight. When my dog wants out she wants out. If the dishes are sitting in the sink something needs to be done before I go to bed; as much as I'm nostalgic about chasing progress - one of my fondest memories is going out to a McDonalds after we finally downed Princess Huhuran after she took us like, 4 resets to kill - that's no longer possible for me.

Also I suck at FPS. So much suck.

@tragedyjones said in Sin City Chronicles:

-Territory and Domain will be tied in to our SMART system

What's the SMART system? Did I miss something again?

@mietze said in Sin City Chronicles:

A side thought. Why the fuck do some people demand that game makers must create/build/eternally run things in order to not be "a flake". While you do have some extremely very few people who are truly capable of doing all three well (newsflash: most people who think they do don't), most games would be better served by allowing different people to have their strengths instead of demanding everything from the person "in charge."

I think the way we (in general) create games falls into certain categories; some game-makers have ideas gestating in them until they feel they'll burst if they don't put them out there in a game, and others just want to run a game, pay $15/month for hosting, grab the latest tarball of the code and go to town.

Either way it's impossible to make a game that scratches all itches, improbably to find an equally good supporting cast to make you realize the game you want to run (you may find a coder but not have enough STs, or the job monkey who also handles your sphere isn't great at dealing with stress or people, etc) and of course the reality of the situation - after it launches a MU* entails more about maintenance work than creativity - means most creative people lose interest after a few weeks of running the game.

But more than anything we judge things based on our criteria, not the games' runners, which is fundamentally unfair. If you want to run a tiny niche game and I want a five-sphere behemoth that gets all the players, it's not right to declare it a failure because it didn't fit my goals when it achieved yours.

@Thenomain said in Are there any MU* RP log repositories out there?:

I don't know of a repository for every log on every game that anyone cares to upload about. I think that'd be a little crazy.

Maybe for posterity purposes? Once the original game's wiki goes down all of its logs are gone, probably forever.

How do you guys feel when a game offers both single- and multi-player modes? Are you feeling the urge to compete in ladders?

A theory of fun.

Hey folks,

I was wondering about the difficulty setting you usually play single-player computer games at. If you can also explain why that'd be swell!

This probably doesn't apply to multiplayer stuff at all, but if you want to include your thoughts on competitive online gaming that's on topic for this thread.

Been binge watching The Last Kingdom on Netflix. Season 2 is enjoyable - I like how even the good guys are still flawed and very much products of their time, including superstition, lack of an education, various religious hangups, etc. And the bad guys are just plain assholes.

The series is easy to watch though. It moves fast, things happen and the plot advances. It doesn't just stick us with endless swordfights of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the narrative sometimes progresses really fast.