Games. Tech. Musings.

New Guild Wars CM

2008-04-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

In another what-a-small-world-it-is announcement, it turns out that Brinstar is the new replacement for Gaile Grey over at ArenaNet. Honestly, it's a pretty thankless job (people whine about everything) but I guess congratulations are due. Best of luck to her!

Twittering

2008-03-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with Twitter at the moment.

In the unlikely event that you want to know just how damn tired I am every day, you can now find out.

MTG Forge

2008-03-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Happened to stumble across a M:tG singleplayer game last week called M:tG Forge (although it's officially called Card Warrior 2 due to legal reasons).

I was saddened but not surprised to learn that it didn't have a real AI - just plays a card it can at random, basically. Still quite the achievement and the guy must have invested a staggering number of hours to get to the point he has. In a world of infinite time, I'd pitch in to build a simple AI - basic minimax, say. Alas, I suspect that the underlying game state model he has is too simplistic to make even a trivial position assessor & minimax analyzer in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Especially given the lack of spare time I have right now.

Anyway, I tried playing it and was immediately frustrated that I was having to continually scroll the playing area back and forth. Luckily, it was open source so I whipped out the latest version of Eclipse and modified the main gui class so it would resize properly. Better than nothing.

That patch was accepted in the latest version so hopefully that should help. If you're a Magic fan it's a fun way to while away some time, so check it out.

Guildomatic

2008-02-18T10:49:00.001-08:00

Went to a party and met up with Matt E, Yang and Walter last night. I've been meaning to write something about one of Yang and Walter's projects for a while now: Guildomatic. If you're a WoW enthusiast looking for a better home online for your guild than a random php forum, this is probably what you're looking for. Yang and Walter are both very sharp and their stuff is always top-notch.

Game Design: Lost in the Shuffle

2008-02-18T10:40:00.000-08:00

WotC's Magic site posted a selection today from Richard Garfield's old Duelist column, Lost in the Shuffle, predominantly about general game design. Always thought-provoking stuff, it was one of my favourite parts of that magazine.

As a sidenote, one of the things Richard and Skaff Elias were up to recently was Spectromancer, an online card game mentioned on Penny Arcade the other week. I've been meaning to check it out for a while but haven't got round to it.

Status Update

2008-01-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted anything, mostly because I didn't have a whole lot to report. With the baby sucking up most of my free time, I'm not playing any Guild Wars PvP at the moment. By the time I get to play a game (usually 11pm or later), most of the guild is asleep and it's too late to go through the get-a-group rigmarole anyway.

So I've been playing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars instead. The 1.4 patch didn't end up coming out by Christmas, but it was released last week. I'll probably write more about that later.

Ok, so here's my current playlist. First, games I'm actively playing, in rough order of the amount of time I spend playing it:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Guild Wars (with the kids)

New Super Mario Brothers (DS) (with the kids)

Bioshock (yeah, I still haven't finished i)t

Brain Age 2 (DS) (when the wife isn't playing it)

Geometry Wars (DS)

And here's the list of other games I still want to play, but don't really have time until I cross some of the above off my list:

Half Life 2: Episodes 1 & 2

Team Fortress 2

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)

X3: Reunion

TES: Oblivion

I'd probably play more Bioshock but honestly it's a bit scary and I'm playing it right before I go to bed. Jump-out-and-go-boo horror isn't the most restful game mechanic in the world.

I've had at least 4 or 5 people point blank order me to go out and buy Call of Duty 4, but the list of shooters above is too long for me to be able to do it. Maybe once I've finished Bioshock and the Half Life episodes.

Quake Wars is still seeing play in the office. It's really very good, overshadowed by other big shooters released around the same time. Get the demo if you haven't tried it. I'm pretty bad but I feel like I at least make some positive impact for the team. For comparison's sake, there are some very well reviewed games in my list there but I still find myself firing up QW as my default game of choice at the moment.

Quake Wars 1.4 patch due out before Christmas

2007-12-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

From the horse's mouth.

Adds a sorely needed Training Mode, adds QWTV (a la HLTV) and a ton of little goodies. Can't wait!

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Beginner Tips

2007-12-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

I've been playing a whole lot of lunchtime Quake Wars at the office as well as a little practice time against the computer at home. The more I play, the more I like the game. It's definitely got a learning curve though and a lot of things aren't obvious unless you read the manual in detail. Here's some of the things I've picked up so far, in no particular order:

Pressing “1” (by default) on any vehicle (including Icarus and Husky) launches a decoy flare
Alt-fire (right mouse button) with an Engineer’s mine makes it a laser tripwire mine instead of a proximity mine
You have to activate mines via looking at them and hitting f before they actually work
Grenades detonate enemy mines but shooting them with infantry weapons doesn’t seem to
If you’re playing a class with deployables (e.g. Engineer, Field Ops, Infiltrator, Covert Ops, etc.) you should have one placed all the time - they’re very powerful. Don’t forget that the medic class has a supply deployable!
If you’re the sniper class, your first priority is making sure that your radar is up all the time. Don’t forget the GDF side has the 3rd Eye radar, which is particularly useful indoors.
Multiple weapons are sometimes bound to the same slot (e.g. the deployable tool and the repair tool for the Engineer are both bound to slot 5). Pressing the same weapon key toggles between them.
Use your context menu (“v” default) A LOT to spot enemy vehicles and deployables. Also use it to request a gunner in appropriate vehicles, health from medics, etc.
When playing Strogg, learn how to use Spawn Hosts and Stroyup/Stroydown! Note that you can claim spawn hosts from the limbo menu as well as in play.
If you’re playing a Soldier/Aggressor in the outdoor sections, you probably want to pick a Rocketlauncher/Obliterator or MG/Hyperblaster instead of an Assault Rifle/Hyperblaster.
The Soldier’s HE charge (Aggressor’s Plasma charge) can be used to do a lot of damage to deployables. Place it, arm it and it will detonate after 40 seconds.
The GDF smoke grenade that the Covert Ops has is useful to cover up planted HE charges and infantry advances.
Covert Ops and Infiltrators can pretend to be members of the other team via looking at a body and using their Hacking Tool.
Alt-fire on Strogg grenades makes the grenade sticky.
Alt-fire on GDF grenades rolls the grenade.
F/mousewheel on scoped weapons zooms the weapon.
If you change class, any deployable you have built will self-destruct.
Deployables have a 170 degree field of view, so the direction you pick for turrets and artillery guns is important. Note that they will turn out of their field of view if attacked.
The Strogg Cyclops has a “stomp” attack to squish infantry close to it. Hit Jump (space) to activate.
The Strogg Cyclops and Devastator can enter “siege mode” to fire faster (although they can’t move then). Hit crouch (C by default) to activate and jump (Space) to deactivate siege mode.
Lots of vehicles have more than one seat. Press Use (F) to toggle between seats. It’s often pretty effective to have more than one person in a vehicle, so listen for people asking for gunners or ask for a gunner via the context menu if you’re driving a vehicle with extra seats.
The sniper weapons are good against aircraft.
If you get the Vehicle Drops XP upgrade, you can call for a Husky/Icarus to be airdropped to you via the context menu (V).

You can bring up a command map with "n" by default

How to design a game

2007-11-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

I'll spare you the pain of trying to find anything via the impenetrable Gleemax interface. My favourite game design ninja, Brian Tinsman strikes again with a series on how to design a game.

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Mostly more relevant to meatspace game design than computer games although at the end of the day, both have the same primary aim: provide entertainment for players. Pay particular attention to the sections on emotional rewards - this is a really key area I don't think most designers think about in such concrete terms.

TF2: Playing the Spy and Pyro

2007-11-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

The two most confusing classes for a newbie (like me) in TF2 are the Spy and Pyro.

So here's a couple of nifty videos on playing the Spy and Pyro by EvilDaedalus, who is clearly some kind of TF2 ninja compared with me.

The main thing I picked up from these that I didn't know previously was for the Pyro: using mostly hit-n-run flanking tactics and copious use of the shotgun. I'd thought of it as a hide-round-a-corner-and-go-boo class, which may have been why so far I've sucked whenever I slipped into something more rubbery and haven't played Pyro much at all. As for Spy, well, there always seems to be a sneaky guy on the team already and I like to fill in the roles that the team isn't covering at the moment.

Mmmmph mmmmmmph!

Team Fortress 2 Initial Impressions

2007-11-21T15:13:00.001-08:00

I played my second night of Team Fortress 2 last night. It has the important advantage over Guild Wars PvP that if the baby wakes up mid-game it's not a major disaster.

Valve may have taken their sweet time getting this game out, but clearly they spent a good amount of time polishing it. It's surprisingly forgiving for an online shooter - unlike Natural Selection, Quake Wars or the Battlefield lines, where noobitude is punished heavily - I felt that I was actually helping my team despite being terrible.

Art direction is excellent throughout and the game design is solid. I'd say my major criticisms are:

I prefer the capture-the-flag mode over capture-the-point, but there's only one CTF map.

There's a bit of a dearth of maps all round. I assume Valve is relying on the game community to fill this gap.

No bot support means no lunchtime games at the office.

For what it's worth, right now my favourite class is the Demoman - in a world where capture-the-point is the most common game type, area denial via sticky bombs and grenade spam is clearly strong. Quick caveat here: given that I only started playing, any tactical insights I have at this point should be basically ignored.

Quake (Office) Wars: Initial Impressions

2007-11-20T16:35:00.000-08:00

I noticed a pile of new graphics card boxes sitting in a cube at work adorned with a sticker saying they included a free copy of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I asked the IT guys if that meant they had a few copies hanging around that noone wanted and sure enough, they did.

Turns out to be a pretty good game. It's a lot like Battlefield and certainly draws a lot of "inspiration" from the Battlefield line. I've only been playing it at lunchtimes at work since my free time is nil at the moment, but it's well suited for that.

Here's the "lunchtime game" assessment.

Pros:
1) You only need 1 install disk for a LAN game (although we have several).
2) The bot support is decent and certainly playable.
3) The games are capped at 20 minutes for a map, so you can get in a game without manager-types getting all upset (however, campaign mode is more like an hour).
4) Due to (2), you can play a game with only a few people - with, say, Team Fortress 2, you'd need a bunch of people for a reasonable game.

Cons:
1) Learning curve is a little rough. There's no in-game tutorial at all, so it just drops you in and slaps you on the back. I could give you a (lengthy) list of all the stuff you need to know, or you could just go watch GreasedScotsman's excellent tutorial video series. However, the videos are pretty long, so if you'd rather read something on the subject this is the pretty much definitive source.
2) You will need bots to play unless you are playing on a pub Internet server or have a lot of friends (at least 5-8+ per side).

As for the actual game itself, well, it's good. I like it more than BF2142, which is the most recent Battlefield game I've played. The games progress in a series of objectives rather than just capture points, with different classes having useful inputs at each stage, which helps to concentrate both sides on single areas at a time. Deployable buildings add tactical depth and varies the gameplay from round to round. Dropping an artillery gun and then sighting it in with the Field Ops laser sight was particularly satisfying.

I suspect that playing it online won't be as fun for me just because I don't have time to get actually good at it and historically the Battlefield games have been rough going for me. I tend to die from sniper shots across the landscape and not even really know what killed me, which isn't terribly exciting. But playing with people in the same skill ballpark was enjoyable.

As for criticisms, I think my main issue would be that the sides could be more asymmetric. While there are definitely differences between the Strogg and GDF, predominantly the classes have the same abilities with different flavours. It seems technically well executed.

One final note: if you have multiple monitors and a NVidia card, your framerate may well be terrible. If you have this issue, you'll want to tweak the driver.

Delicious Portal (no spoilers)

2007-11-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

I finally decided that the Portal spoilers weren't going to evade me forever, so I broke down on Friday night and bought the Orange Box.

I finished the main plotline of Portal last night. I think Yahtzee had it about right in describing it as "the most fun you'll have with your PC till they invent a force-feedback codpiece". A moist, delicious slice of awesome.

P.S. Best. Ending. Ever.

Guild Wars: Mind Blast Arena

2007-11-09T16:50:00.001-08:00

Given that my computer has decided to melt whenever I try to play Bioshock, I was back in the Random Arenas last night. I was running a variant of a creative Mind Blast build I'd seen posted by Patccmoi:

E/Me Clumsy Mind Blaster

12+2+1 Fire Magic
10 Illusion
8+1 Energy Storage
Mind Blast
Glyph of Immolation
Liquid Flame
Fire Attunement
Clumsiness
Imagined Burden
Flame Djinn's Haste
Resurrection Signet

I subbed Liquid Flame for Fireball and Glyph of Immolation for Mark of Rodgort, because I'd rather avoid 2s casts and the Mark wasn't sticking a whole lot.
Easy to play, decent damage and melee shutdown and the all-important ability to kick an assassin in the nuts. I'm not sure that you really need Fire Attunement but it doesn't hurt to have it. No self heal, so knowing when to run away is pretty important. For the most part, you can just load up with Attunement and a Glyph and then just alternate Mind Blast and Clumsiness on a hapless melee type, while keeping another one near-perma-snared with Imagined Burden.
Don't forget your high energy (+30e/-2r) equipment swap - very important for Mind Blast builds.

Guild Wars: Metagame Shakeup

2007-11-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

Well, the major skill changes I predicted came out last night.

By far the biggest change is effectively removing Light of Deliverance from the flagstand builds. The metagame has been balanced on LoD for quite a while now so I expect a period of turbulent flux while things sort themselves out.

I saw iQ's latest smurf on obs last night running condition pressure with traps, a Rotting Flesh mesmer and Ensign on an old-school Ether Prodigy / Heal Party runner. Here's Ensign's post on the subject. Personally, I think he may be jumping the gun a bit - it's been a long time since we've seen Martyr, for example. There are a lot of other possible previously second-tier options - e.g. Motivation Paragons providing small party-wide heals, Restoration ritualists - that may emerge. Right now Word of Healing is amazingly strong and clearly the best replacement on the monk that was running LoD previously. I saw Tommy had Heal Party and Mantra of Concentration last night on a WoH monk and apparently some Euro guilds are running dual WoH monks.

The idea of this update, as I understand it, is to make normal play more exciting than the block/protection metagame that's been around for quite a while - i.e. instead of all the bars staying static till a sudden collapse, a more dynamic situation where spot healing is important and not everyone is always at full (well, with the old LoD, 80%) health. We'll see if that actually happens.

In other news, Weapon of Warding is back, and Conjure Nightmare got nerfed. Yes, paradoxically it got nerfed by making it cheaper, since you only ever cast it when you already had Auspicious Incantation up. Healer's Boon is also looking pretty hot - in general, the Healing line as a whole just got a lot more important.

Splinter Weapon got a nerf so you can't destroy all the NPCs in one shot. It's still good, just not quite as ridiculous. There is a question of whether you can fit that character into a GvG build now though.

The recall change is clearly aimed at Hero Battles and I don't see it making a big change a lot in GvG.

Bloodspike got a nerf. Cry me a river.

And for the PvEers out there, watch out - Mhenlo in GW:EN is a LoD healer, so he'll be feeling this nerf where the sun doesn't shine. If you're heroing it up, you may want to bring a hero monk and skip Mhenlo for the moment.

I'm Meeeelllllttttiiiiiiinnnnnng

2007-11-08T10:04:00.001-08:00

I got a chance to squeeze in 20 mins or so of Bioshock last night. The computer overheated twice in that time. At least, I think so - the symptom was that it hard froze and needed to be reset. I guess I need to spring for the optional 80mm and 92mm fans for the Sonata case I have.

Bioshock seems rough on the graphics card - since I got a new case fan I haven't had any overheating in Guild Wars. Maybe this is nature's way of telling me to play more Guild Wars instead of Bioshock.

Latest Gossip

2007-11-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

Just a little gossip from the last week or so.

Helped out over the weekend with a TV shoot for the Tinsman's nifty AngelQuest game, along with the Rosewaters. Sounds like they'll get a segment and interview on a certain well-known TV talk show in a few months. No, I wasn't on camera, although my oldest son was.

Played some Winston Draft with Izzy on Monday night. I drafted like a total muppet - one of the worst draft decks I've ever made. I'm really out of practice. In my defense, I hadn't played with Lorwyn yet and I was holding a grumpy baby for some of the draft. But really I just sucked. Still fun though - I really love Magic even after all these years. If you're a Magic player and haven't tried Winston draft, you really should - it's the best 2-man Limited format.

The major mistake I think I was making was being too happy to settle for a pile with a playable card in my colours instead of being more choosy and skipping to try to find more removal. Izzy ended up with virtually all the removal and I only had one bomb (which I never drew) so it was a really savage beating. When you haven't played with a set at all, it's hard to gauge the average power level so you can figure out when piles are skippable.

On the GW front, I don't want to give away anything too exciting, but it did sound like the upcoming skill balance will really shake things up a bit. That, and some interesting pricing updates. We'll see how the community reacts. All of this is really making me miss Guild Wars PvP and Magic, I have to say.

The general community reaction to introducing shrines to the arenas seems to be negative, although I enjoyed it on the few occasions I've had a chance to try it in Random Arenas. The 20-point win total does seem too high for Random Arenas though - lowering it to 10 or having an auto-win condition for really lopsided matchups (as in Alliance Battles) would be sensible. I'm guessing Izzy will just take the shrines back out though.

Maybe now the baby is sleeping a bit better I'll try to get in a little bit of pick-up GW PvP. I do want to try to finish Bioshock and move on to the Orange Box soon though. I've desperately been avoiding Portal spoilers but something tells me I won't keep it up forever.

Guild Wars: Shrines in Arenas

2007-11-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

So apparently ArenaNet added Hero Battles maps to the Arenas rotation. It only says Team Arenas in the update, but apparently they added them to Random Arenas too. Not sure whether that's intentional or just a bug.

I'm curious as to how this plays out. Of course, I expect a lot of bitching right now no matter whether it's good or bad. Maybe I'll manage to get a few free minutes and check into the arenas this weekend. Oh, just in case you didn't notice the front page news, it's a bonus points weekend in the arenas too.

Update: according to Izzy, adding the HB maps to Random Arenas was intentional. It was the change log that had the mistake.

Guild Wars: Beating Costume Brawl

2007-11-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

Since presumably Costume Brawl was pulled today at the end of Halloween, now seems like the perfect time to post a guide to how to win a lot. How2beet as the kids these days say. Well, I'm very lazy and Rex already wrote one, so you can go read his endless waffling instead.

My free time so far this week at home adds up to a grand total of nullminuten so I didn't get to play any more Costume Brawl. I for one think the Brawl will be back, so I'm not totally heartbroken. I bet the skill bars are different next time though.

Games: Cascade

2007-11-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Felt curious and trundled round the Internet today for a bit of nostalgia. Turns out a little word game I wrote back in the day called Cascade (registration required) is still going, albeit displayed in the prime locked-filing-cabinet-beware-of-the-leopard placement I'd expect. The original site it was on was PlaySite, but that's changed hands a few times now and now it belongs to iWin. Cascade is certainly playable but needs a lot more love to be actually good. Still, when I left, it had had about 10 million games played and that was about 6 years or so ago now. I was sorry to see that apparently noone ever found the wacky intermittent tile freeze bug that cropped up occasionally.

Cascade is somewhere between Tetris and Scrabble. My wife was always a lot better at the game than I am - and some of the players out there have notched up 10,000 games or more and are amazingly good. My verbal IQ can be contrasted unfavourably with a week-dead badger's, so it's not very surprising I'm bad at the game.

According to Google, some other bright spark decided to put out a different game called Cascade (in 2002, which if I recall correctly was after when my game came out in perpetual beta) and since that's actually a money maker it hides all the entries for my little game. Alas.

Game Design: Making Games More Fun

2007-10-30T16:03:00.002-07:00

Alright, it's plug time. Go read this post on how to make games more fun in the design stage. Sadly, right now the Gleemax site is pretty horrific, as you might expect from Wizards' rather lacking IT expertise. Hopefully they'll make it better in due course.

Full disclosure: Brian Tinsman is a good friend of mine. He's worked on a ton of games in the hobby space at this point - oh, and his book on game design is pretty good too.

Guild Wars: Costume Brawl

2007-10-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

This Halloween, we got a new mini-game - Costume Brawl. In a nutshell, it's a 5v5 PvP format with random team selection and fixed skill bars per class on Hero Battles maps. The actual costume flavour seems very weak. You get the skin of a Hero of the appropriate sex and class. Given that it's Halloween, monster skins would have been a much better choice. I'm guessing that was what they wanted but presumably it would cause animation issues since players have a much wider selection of animations than monsters. Alright, I'm not a big flavour person so let's get down to the important stuff - game mechanics.

Personally, I think that the format itself seems pretty good although I didn't get to play it enough to be sure. The skill bars could use some tweaking but that's pretty par for the course at this point - ArenaNet's track record on preset skill bars is not good. Tactical splitting and play skill are definitely important in this format, and the lack of skill bar building makes it slightly (but only slightly) more friendly to casual players than the usual PvP formats with their near-vertical learning curves.

For average to experienced players, the Ranger is head and shoulders above the other builds. This is a capping and splitting format, so survivability and mobility are the order of the day - and just as in GvG, the Ranger has the best average 1v1 matchups of all the choices available. The other bars are generally at least playable with the exception of the Paragon, which I wouldn't recommend.

Note that this is a very violent format, with relatively weak healing options, so all the characters pack self-heals. The nice thing about this is that it fixes the good-monk-equals-win problem of Random Arenas - mixes of most character types are at least semi-viable, and player skill is generally more important than the class selection. That said, player skill is important enough that generally the key to winning or losing is who you get on your team, which can be frustrating at times.

One more tip:

RUN AWAY WHEN YOU'RE OUTNUMBERED.

In a splitting format, picking and choosing your fights is very important. If it's 3v1 against you, head for the hills and just try to stay alive. If you can escape without being snared, you'll either be taking up a bunch of their team, giving your team numbers elsewhere, or you'll live to collapse on that 1 other guy somewhere else on the map. I see bad players fighting helpless odds virtually every single match. Keep an eye on your radar and start running before all the guys in the area have you in spell range.

If I was a betting man, I'd say that this format is a testbed for some similar stuff in Guild Wars 2.

Always Check the Fans

2007-10-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

I had a bunch of graphical artifact issues since I started playing Bioshock - black textures and the like - and instability too. I upgraded the graphics drivers to the latest beta with the result that stability was a bit better but now other games (like Guild Wars) started crashing and showing artifacts too.

Of course, I guessed it was the game and/or the new drivers that were doing it, especially since a lot of other people were reporting crash bugs. But I eventually figured out that the GPU was overheating. I have a XFX Geforce 7900 - and one of the ones that's pre-overclocked a bit on purchase - so I theorized that maybe it was just overclocked too far and spent too much time fiddling around with the clock settings. Still no luck.

In the end, I cracked the case and saw that the rear case fan wasn't actually turning. Well, that'd do it. I had checked previously and it was blowing air but I guess the fan was full of gunk and the rpm was down enough that the GPU was overheating. Weirdly enough, in a land of Microsoft tech junkies, I couldn't get a replacement 120mm fan in Redmond and ended up getting it via the magical power of the Internet.

So, the moral of the story - if you're having heat issues, always check the fans.

Still Not Dead

2007-10-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

Contrary to some media reports, I am not actually dead. Just resting.

Or anyway, I wish I was.

Since my last check in with the online world, some personal drama happened that I won't bore you with and one other minor thing - I had a daughter. Turns out that babies don't have a pause button, especially when they have colic. This means that I'm watching a lot of TV and not playing much game-wise, which is all rather sad since I'd much rather play games than watch TV.

In a few stolen moments of gametime, I've squeezed in a bit of GW PvE in the new Eye of the North expansion, which is nice although rather grindy. I guess enough PvE people liked all the previous title stuff that they figured they may as well answer the call for more grind, but this time reward it with in-game significance instead of just visual differences. I haven't got to play any PvP at all since the baby was born, which is a great shame.

In other news, I've also been playing the ubiquitous Bioshock, about which plenty has been written. My verdict is that there's a reason "shock" is in the name, but nonetheless a wonderfully atmospheric game you have to buy simply to know what everyone is talking about if nothing else. I should caution you that it's a bit demanding on the machine, though.

One last thing for now - there's a new king of online game reviews. Highly recommended, if NSFW.

Skill vs. Treadmills

2007-04-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Insightful post over at Raph Koster's blog on why successful games invariably have treadmill mechanics.

As a sidenote, one thing that I've noticed is that skilled players of a given game (online or offline), when given the chance to influence game mechanic development, typically demand games that further reward skill. This isn't always beneficial in terms of making the game fun to play.

The e-King Is Dead

2007-04-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently, while I was on holiday Rex decided to ragequit e-life (again) in a fit of e-drama without so much as a goodbye. No cookie for you, Mr. Sausaletus. Consider your wrist e-smacked.

Guild Wars: Frontline tips

2007-04-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a useful post over at the Mostly Harmless forums on playing frontline roles (warrior or dervish). I'm pretty terrible at playing in the front line, although admittedly I haven't gone back and tried for a while.

Guild Wars: Hard Mode

2007-04-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Does exactly what it says on the tin. No, really.

Guild Wars: Hard Mode

2007-04-19T15:27:00.002-07:00

PvE Hard Mode is about to be released. Check out the official page for the details.

Edit: one non-obvious point they didn't mention - to get access to Hard Mode for a PvE campaign, you have to log in with a character who's beaten the campaign. After that, all your characters can play in Hard Mode for that campaign.

Guild Wars: Automated Tournament Thoughts

2007-04-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

In large part, the AT stuff posted looks very good. I'm principally concerned with GvG here because I think the HvH format right now needs some love to make it more about fighting and less about capping. I'm not sure how much it can be rescued, to be honest. Fundamentally you have 3 not-very-bright heroes on each team and only one human, so overruling bad AI decisions via a clunky interface is always going to be a large part of that game. I'm not convinced that's ever going to be really fun.

I was hoping to play some more HvH while I was on vacation just to see if I would come around to the format but my wife's laptop was just too slow for PvP - so I finally got around to finishing Nightfall's PvE campaign instead.

Anyway, some thoughts in random order:

The posted schedule looks like ArenaNet was trying too hard to appear even-handed. The round-the-clock distribution of playing times is fine in theory but in practice the bulk of their players are in a few time zones - EST, GMT+1 and GMT+2 mostly, I'm guessing, from the number of European and American guilds. I expect the schedule to be revised before the system goes live.

Shiny "Barbie Wars" rewards for doing well are a nice touch. People always seem to respond well to e-peen stroking opportunities.

Sadly, 4 hours straight is a pretty big time commitment for anyone with a life. Personally, I'd rather have a round or two less (say, 16 or 8 guild pods) or skipping the final single-elimination rounds and just doing straight Swiss to guarantee a shorter play time. Previously, I'd thought about tournament options where you just played a match every week or somesuch but after the Celestial tourney I'm convinced this is a bad idea. Getting 8 people to show up at the same time who don't know each other closely is problematic and a big time sink. Anyway, I guess we'll see how long each tourney really goes.

Higher K-values: well, about time. Hopefully this will mean ratings will start reflecting real guild strength more closely. Once again, we shall see how this plays out.

One missing point that's not mentioned is map choice. Hopefully maps will be random to cut down on the 8v8 builds on Jade phenomenon, etc.

As for this:

We are always trying to move Guild Wars to the fore of competitive e-sports

Sadly, I think this is doomed to failure. GW is just never going to be a good spectator's game because the amount of knowledge required to enjoy watching is just too high. Without a lot of spectators, you have no real sport. Magic has a similar problem - unless you know the cardsets the players are using really well, you can't follow what's happening. That said, my current #1 feature I'd really like is to be able to download observer mode replays. I have a suspicion that that is technically very difficult to implement and so will never happen.

Overall, I'm excited. Hopefully I'll actually be on the OoX core GvG roster and get to play...

Guild Wars: Automated Tournament Details!

2007-04-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

The official post just went up. System starts up in April.

I have some thoughts on this but not enough time to write them down now. Watch this space. For now, let's just say I'm excited.

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament over

2007-04-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

The Celestial Tournament is over, with Team Everfrost [eF] taking the crown over Esoteric Warriors [EW]. In what I can only assume is some kind of cry for help, Rex has taken it upon himself to blog about pretty much each and every game played in the quarterfinals and onwards.

In other not-quite-news-yet, according to the official site, apparently we'll hear more about the breathlessly-awaited Automated Tournament system "very soon".

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament final rounds

2007-03-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

Well, the Celestial Tournament is finally over for us with yet another forfeit. Rex already posted his verbose-as-always screed on the subject. In summary:

Wins vs. teams with a hench: 1
Losses vs. teams with a hench: 1
Non-hench savage beatings received: 1
Non-hench savage beatings inflicted: 1
Forfeits (win or loss): 4

Pretty sad. There weren't really any good matches for us. The only team we played that was really in our skill bracket had to play with a henchman. Since we were a PST guild and most of the guilds are European, they'd have to get up in the middle of the night to play us and hence forfeits were abundant. Well, I told you so. Admittedly, I didn't figure out the full extent of the scheduling horror until I saw the first round pairings. I think the whole 8-man roster fiasco overshadowed the time zone issue initially.

Guild Wars: Fixing Hexes

2007-03-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

Phelann has an interesting post on fixing hexes over at the Guild Hall. Specifically, tweaking single hex removal skills to remove 1 hex per 2 hexes on the target, rounding up - so Holy Veil removes 2 on a target with 3, but only 1 on a target with 2. Makes covering hexes still have a point, but overwhelming hex stacks not so useful.

Could be one approach for fixing the all-or-nothing nature of hexes that seems to be a bit of a problem right now. Some hexes are fine - notably water snares and some of the mesmer domination line - but most are only worth it if the whole build is devoted to them. I'm not sure that this really solves the issue but it does at least provide a solution to the rock-paper-scissors metagame that narrow mass removals like Divert Hexes are currently providing.

Guild Wars: GW2 & Eye of the North official announcement

2007-03-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

The announcement's over at GWGuru - it came in PCGamer.

Sounds like a more standard MMO-ish direction for GW2. Notably for the PvP fanatics in the audience, they're currently planning on having the current GW arena-style PvP as well as "world-style" PvP, which sounds like the Realm vs. Realm PvP of Dark Age of Camelot.

New skills but no new professions in the next GW chapter, due out at the end of the year.

In summary, the main points of the previously accidentally leaked details were correct.

Guild Wars: QQ vs EW

2007-03-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Go watch this match from the Celestial Tournament. If you're easily bored, skip to the last 3 minutes.

Music choice is a bit sketchy but the actual match is excellent.

Guild Wars: Izzy Interview

2007-03-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

I finally got round to listening to Izzy's interview on Weapon of Choice. Here are some choice tidbits:

ArenaNet made a conscious decision not to prioritize PvP balance testing in Alpha because it wasn't working well for them. The most competitive players didn't have a big enough incentive to play Alpha regularly to really bring out the issues.
Balance changes don't happen overnight - it takes a lot of people and time (translations to a zillion languages, etc).
Yes, Jade Isle needs some love.
Right now they're planning on the Automated Tournament system having daily, weekly and monthly tournaments with prizes for different levels of play and support for different time zones. Izzy seemed pretty sad they didn't have the system from the start.
The PvP priority from their point of view is building a larger PvP base and that's the point of the AT system - to energize the PvP community.

It's an interesting interview, and recommended if you're interested in the PvP game. I invariably agree with Izzy - I think he does a good job of moving the game in the right direction. Even though he has my fish.

Guild Wars: Dev Update

2007-03-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Q. What do ritualist spike and discord spike have in common?

A. They both just got nerfed in the face.

Thanks Izzy.

Shadow Prison, Wastrel's Demise and Blades of Steel also got a tap from the nerfbat. Hero Battles also got tweaked to hopefully fix the "holding" builds. I haven't played HvH for a long time since I'm always GvGing these days. I don't know whether I'll get to try the format again anytime soon.

The Usual Apologia

2007-03-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

The usual readers may have noticed that they aren't.

I blame it on spending too much time on the guild-membership-required XoO forums, watching obs mode, practicing for the Celestial Tournament and *gasp* actually doing work.

In other news, Blogger flagged me as a spam bot. Whee.

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament, Round 2

2007-02-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

Second round pairings are up.

My division of the XoO hordes went 2-0 vs. Cheeky Monkeys in round 1, as Rex already noted. I suspect this round is going to be a whole lot harder - the next team actually has a reasonable rating. Not that the ladder's a great indication of a whole lot right now, but it does indicate that they probably aren't normally a 4 hero team.

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament round 1 pairings

2007-02-16T14:06:00.000-08:00

Pairings for round 1 are up.

We're up against Greedy Monkeys. They're presumably a guild created for the tournament, since they have no play history at this point.

Guild Wars: Dev update

2007-02-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

Gaile posted another Dev Update. See the link for the PvE stuff. The main PvP-relevant content was what they're testing internally right now:

Paragon diversity and balance. Once we’ve had more time to see the most recent changes in effect, we’ll see if further changes are needed.
Bow skills for rangers.
Ranger pet adjustments. We're pleased to say we have a rudimentary version of pet controls up-and-running on our test servers. We’re looking forward getting those into the live game as soon as we’ve examined all of the play balance issues this might introduce.

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament roster enlarged

2007-02-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Mr. Gills over at ArenaNet came to his senses and raised the roster size for the Celestial Tournament to 10, instead of the previous no-hesitation-or-deviation 8. Much better.

Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament rules posted

2007-02-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

The "Celestial Tournament" rules were just posted at the official site.

Things of note:

Your roster is fixed at 8 people - i.e. no substitutions at all.
Looks like it's going to be something like 1 Swiss-paired match about every week or so (there's a min 4 days between matches).
Cut to the single elimination rounds is the top 16.
Roster has to be submitted by Feb 14.

Guild Wars: Protecting the Spatula

2007-02-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

Apropos of nothing, I figured I'd never posted my favourite GW-related forum post ever so I should probably get round to it.

RE: [War] Protector's Strike

It's a decent spike skill to follow up your goodies with a final quick hit. It has a place now, particularly on R/Ws.

My only complaint about the skill now is that it doesn't have anything to do with what the skill description says. It could read "Target foe gets +2 joyfulness. I am the spatula." and be just as descriptive as it is now. It has nothing to do with moving foes and +damage, and everything to do with that subtle 1/2s attack speed.

Yes, it was Ensign.

Guild Wars: Eurosplitting

2007-02-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

No GW for me last night, just some quality time with Salmon with a Soy Glaze served with Aioli Green Beans. My cooking's slowly getting better.

Night before last I finally played a couple of GvG matches that Ranger. Well, almost. It was switched to Broadhead Arrow (BHA for short) and Mending Touch instead of Burning Arrow and Pin Down. So, first time in GvG on a Ranger for a long, long time for me. 9 months? Maybe? I hadn't played BHA before either, so it was a "total learning experience". I did warn the team that I'd probably suck but they weren't having it. Anyway, here's an edited version of part of my guild match report.

Highlight: wiping [izzy]'s initial 6-man gank attempt with our 4-man team.

Lowlight: pretty much losing the game for the guild vs. [izzy] by not killing their turtling monk quickly enough at the end.

Anyway, we were running a Eurosplit build. If you don't know what that is, it's a 5/3 split team where the 3-man split consists of a "You're All Alone!" warrior, a Burning Arrow or Broadhead Arrow ranger and a Ritualist/Ele Weapon of Remedy guy with a snare or two.

So, back to BHA. The arc of the BHA is about 45 degrees, which means if they're moving in anything other than an absolutely straight line you will miss. It's basically impossible to land it on a monk without a snare because they are forever fidgeting around and generally don't have lengthy casting times. You can't afford to fire a speculative shot because it's on a 15 second recharge. Other spellcasters like eles are easier pickings and you don't need the ritualist. Mesmers are gripped with continuous paranoia since everyone hates them and will probably notice you are on top of them (unless they're busy casting Diversion, anyway). Eles, apparently not. Anyway, here's your plan if you can't get a snare on your victim:

1) Run up to ele, who is probably casting SF, blinding the warrior for the nth time or something else exciting.
2) Administer kisses to both cheeks, Italian style. If you don't wish to do this step, make sure you're close enough that you could.
3) Wait for him to start on a spell. Switch to your shortbow and shoot something else random in the meantime. You may wish to whistle, innocently.
4) Shoot him in the face.
5) Keep shooting him. At some point he will work out that the spells, they no work and probably run away. Keep shooting him and look for other interrupt targets.

I'm told that the arc of the BHA is fixed - it doesn't even matter what bow you're using - so cunning plans like Read the Wind or Favourable Winds don't work. Even with a hex snare on a monk you should try to be as close as possible.

Guild Wars: Skill balance changes

2007-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

I noticed this handy post up at the Guru by Sol Solus on which skills changed since the last test weekend.

Guild Wars: Automated Tournaments, continued

2007-02-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Gaile says:

You know what's cool about this upcoming tourney? It will involve any guild that wants to compete. Full Swiss system, so it may be 50 guilds, 500 guilds, 5000 guilds... only time will tell.

Um. Ok. Not sure how that's going to be terribly practical. I guess we shall see. Rules are supposed to be released next week.

Guild Wars: Skill updates

2007-02-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Heads up, the first skill/HA tweaks are up. They'll be changing through the weekend as players discover things that are totally broken but this is the initial setup.

Key quote:

Jagged Bones: Increased Recharge time to 15 seconds.

But wait....

Gale: decreased knock down duration to 2 seconds.

<darthvader>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!</darthvader>

Ok, it was too good. But... but...

Guild Wars: Developer Roundtable

2007-02-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Billiard posted his report on the Developer Roundtable meeting held last weekend. Speaking of which, I forgot to post a link for his previous report, which was more for colour than substance.

Interesting stuff, although no earthshaking revelations of note.

Guild Wars: Dev Update

2007-02-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

The controversy continues. From here:

Tournaments and Competitive Play:

The automated tournament system will be in place around the start of April, 2007.
The ATS will offer competitive play and rewards for both Hero Battles (sometimes called 1v1) and GvG competition.
Our focus at present is to develop expanding support for competitive play, to include more players in various gameplay modes, and to reward players with both in-game and real-world prizes.
Competitive play options will include daily competitions in the ATS with in-game prizes.
There will be monthly competitions, also via the ATS, that will offer exciting real world prizes like video cards or consumer electronics to the top finishers.
The monthly tournaments will provide support for non-PvPers through the Xunlai Tournament House.
Players of varying skill levels will be able to compete and win prizes.
A new competitive season of Guild versus Guild play will starting in the next couple of weeks, and the official rules for that competition will be distributed quite soon.
The upcoming GvG tournament will provide exciting real-world prize support for the guilds, and will be supported through the Xunlai Tournament House, as well.
This Guild versus Guild tournament will extend until just prior to the start of the Automated Tournament System in April.
Skill Balancing:

We're rolling out another set of skill balances this Friday. There are new skill balance changes, and some of those that were previously tested have been tweaked and adjusted based on player feedback and team observation. Other changes will be carried over in the same form as they were presented last weekend.
We will be collecting feedback on the second round of skill balance changes over the next few weeks.
You may see noticeable changes to skills after this weekend, and there will be additional skill adjustments over time.
Heroes' Ascent:

You know about the testing weekend this week, of course. (See the news post of January 30th.) Having received a great deal of valuable player feedback about HA last weekend, we've made some really significant changes to some of the maps and gameplay mechanics.
We will hold testing of Heroes' Ascent with an 8v8 party size configuration next weekend, starting on February 9th. This will be a limited test-nor more than a week in length-after which we will revert to the current 6v6.
We will then continue to collect community feedback on the party size issue before making a final decision on HA party size by the end of February.

We're all looking forward to good feedback in the next few weeks, and hope you enjoy these testing opportunities and the news about upcoming tournaments.

Um. Okay?

Seems a little weird that this isn't on the main site.

Wait, did she say April?

Update: more details in the thread. Apparently the rules for the upcoming interim season will be released next week and there will be real-world prizes of some kind.

Guild Wars: GvG Team Positioning

2007-01-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent series of 3 articles by Xanthar over at GWGuru.

There's a lot of information out there on skill usage and general play, but very little high-level strategy stuff. This helps to fill that gap. Recommended.

Guild Wars: Jagged Bones

2007-01-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

Only got a few rounds of GvG in over the weekend - the guild hall was pretty quiet. One of the games I did play was against a Jagged Bones build, a top 100 ranked guild. Previously the only one I'd played against wasn't so good and I just camped on the JB guy and Diverted him all over the place while our split team won the game for us.

These guys had enough clue to have Hex Breaker on the JB necro and we didn't have a Wild Blow to get it off. He had Distortion as a panic button for warrior defense but wasn't dumb enough to cast one of his key spells (JB -> Death Nova -> Taste of Death) while he didn't have Hex Breaker up.

We did split against them but they could send back enough hex shutdown to slow down the split team while their massive pressure and energy engine overran the flag team. I spent quite a while thinking about the match and I'm not really sure what you can do about that build. If you can't shut down the Jagged Bones engine you're pretty much hosed because all those necros will be pumping out Infuse Health, Aegis and expensive hexes like no tomorrow due to the fact they effectively have 15 pips of energy regen.

There's a discussion thread on the best way to fix the problem over at GWGuru. I think that the real fix is to deal with Soul Reaping - I'm liking the energy regen options people are proposing. But that would be a major change requiring a lot of testing. A band aid solution like making Jagged Horrors give no Soul Reaping energy would be better than nothing right now.

Guild Wars: Still failing to suck less

2007-01-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

Another night and a few more Random Arena games playing the same goddamn ranger build. Results were uniformly terrible.

It's always hard to tell in RA when it's just you sucking vs. your team sucking - hence you still see people firing up Mending etc. - but at some point you have to figure the problem is you. Maybe I'm just not to be trusted with sharp implements.

I think another part of it is that the Ranger build, while good, isn't as brokenly overpowered in RA as some other options (namely, hexes and Blinding Surge). If your build is ridiculously good it's certainly easier to propel a less-than-stellar team to victory. In the past I think I've been spoiled by the power of the build I've been playing.

In any event, after suffering through more Failing To Shoot People suckitude I was summoned by the blessed call of the GvG mesmer. Some of the more ferocious and satisfying Galing I've inflicted in my time soon followed, ending up on 3-0 for the night's GvG. Did I mention that I like Gale? I love Gale. Maybe not as much as the iQ guys but I'm not sure that liking a skill that much is entirely healthy. The thought that Gale used to cost 5 energy seems deliciously naughty. Ok, maybe that and sick and wrong.

Guild Wars: Automated Tournaments

2007-01-26T10:10:00.000-08:00

A little bird tells me that the AT system is going to be significantly delayed. No official confirmation of this. If it's true, hopefully Mr. Gills over at ArenaNet can work out a decent interim solution.

Guild Wars: Skill balance timetable

2007-01-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

From Gaile:

The plan is to roll out the second and more-final version of the permanent update around February 2nd. Then, you guys hammer on them, assess, post, the designers read, and some final tweaks are made.

Testing probably will go like this:

* Test
* Rollback, make a large number of adjustments based on primary test <-- where we are just now
* Test
* Tweak, while leaving the changes in the game

I will ask about that, maybe there will be a rollback, but I think it is more like as I outlined above.

Update: it is now confirmed that the next test weekend will indeed keep the changes in the game (thanks Billiard!).

Guild Wars: Skill balance review

2007-01-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

So, I could post a writeup of the skill balance weekend, but there's really no need. Ensign thoughtfully posted a detailed analysis of the skill changes. In my humble opinion he has the best grasp of the game mechanics of anyone outside ArenaNet, so you're better off reading what he wrote than anything I could come up with.

Patccmoi's point later in that thread about Weapon of Quickening is good though - I've played a GvG build using that skill and it was ok but not amazing. With the buff listed in the weekend I think it could be extremely strong.

Guild Wars: Practicing Ranger

2007-01-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

Sad to say, but I haven't really been actually doing a whole lot about the test weekend. Last time I could have GvG'd, they wanted a Burning Arrow Ranger - alas, my mesmer spot had been replaced in the build - and I declined since it'd been quite a while since I played Ranger at all. I went to play RA and it turned out that saying no was definitely the best decision. Getting used to interrupts with a flight time and actually having an evade stance will take a little while, although I think I'm making progress.

Figured I may as well make a TA build centered around the Ranger for variety. Haven't had a chance to try it yet though.

Anyway. Looks like more RA practice (or hopefully some TA if I get the chance) is in order until I figure out which part of the bow you're supposed to point at the bad guys. Then maybe GvG will be back on the menu.

Guild Wars: Temporary tweaking

2007-01-19T15:02:00.000-08:00

Well, the testing weekend is underway, with a phenomenal list of skill tweaks and major changes to Heroes' Ascent. It's going to take a while just to read the skill changes in detail, never mind figure out the implications. Note that the changes are only in effect for this weekend.

Guild Wars: Night of Failure

2007-01-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

One of those nights where nothing seems to be working. Played a few rounds of HA with a crazy Clamor of Souls build dreamed up by a guildmate. I asked before we started "What happens if they don't ball up?". Turns out the answer is "you lose". Didn't win a match. We did beat the NPCs at the beginning in 10 seconds one round which is a new speed record for me. Not terribly consoling though.

Then tried Divineshadows' hex shutdown TA build (the one at the bottom of the linked page) with Sausaletus Rex and a couple of randomly drafted XoO types. I think we had some poor player chemistry - 4 people who wanted to play midlines and no melee/monk types - but the build failed spectacularly, losing every game. Doesn't fill me with confidence for the GvG hex build. One note of interest was playing against a mesmer (Rusty) who schooled me in GvG a few days ago - well, ok, it wasn't so much being schooled as being hit by a schoolbus. Turns out the guy is a good player but also an infamous GW troll and used to be in XoO.

I feel like I should make a new TA build but working on builds seems a bit pointless given the skill tweaking coming up this weekend. If I did, I'd probably just make something a whole lot like the build that the good TA team was playing:

* Melandrus Dervish
* BSurge Mesmer
* Burning Arrow Ranger
* ZB monk

Guild Wars: Blinding Surge Mesmer

2007-01-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

Another night and a few more GvGs. This time round I was playing the more defensive Blinding Surge Dom Mesmer variant, instead of the Energy Surge version I was playing previously. It's similar but differs in one important respect - its target selection includes the opposing melee characters as well as their midlines and monks. This might sound minor, but Blinding Surge has a 4 second recharge.

That means you should ideally be blinding one of their warriors every 4 seconds. If you are a bad mesmer that's all you do, but you really should be Diverting key skills, Galing monks on a spike and chipping in with Spiritual -> Wastrels as an assist all while maintaining your position, kiting and pre-kiting judiciously. Continuously changing targets the whole time you're engaged isn't all that easy. Oh, and really you ought to be looking for their warrior converge or tell-tale Shadow Prison so you can Surge at the right time to prevent adrenaline spikes.

Anyway, I seemed to be doing ok for the most part in the couple of matches I played - certainly better than Monday night. Saved a bunch of adren spikes, covered monk retreats, Shattered enchantments that mattered, didn't get my own Surge Diverted by their mesmer, killed a bunch of their guys, etc. Crazy target switching action. Sadly, the teams we were playing against were pretty good and our team generally wasn't playing well for some reason. We lost both matches. Against one of the teams (I think it was Guild Drama [sigh] but I'm not 100% sure) their mesmer chipped in amongst the flurry of "gg"s with "good mesmer".

Unfortunately, I think he was being sarcastic. In their final feeding frenzy around the GL as I was blinding warriors and diverting midliners, I misclicked and blinded their monk. C'est la vie.

Guild Wars: Splitting Hexes, part 2

2007-01-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

After noodling around with the hex split team idea I had the other day, I concluded that it was probably a dead end - but hex shutdown still seems a powerful route to go. Right now the most powerful skill in GvG is probably Blinding Surge, so a lot of people are set up to fight it. People are still doing damage mostly via melee and there aren't many hexes around (and consequently not a lot of serious hex removal).

This new build doesn't have the movement control that the other build has and consequently wouldn't be great on the ice map. But it should provide a reasonable answer to the current metagame with a decent spike, medium hex shutdown and light degen pressure. Sorts out a bunch of the issues I was having with the other build. It should be able to split but it's probably better in 8v8.

Guild Wars: Splitting Hexes

2007-01-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm thinking about a new GvG build. It's always an interesting exercise that makes you think about the roles of characters and what skirmish matchups are favourable. As to whether it'll ever actually get played, who knows. It's in an early draft so bear with me.

Anyway, here's the GWShack listing.

The idea is to make a hex degen pressure build that can fight 8v8 but is readily split. Right now I really need to test the characters a bit more to see if they're packing enough punch. However, that's been a bit difficult because for the last week as soon as I log into GW I'm greeted with insistent calls to get my mesmer on for GvG. Admittedly, that was the reason I joined up with XoO and so I can't really complain. I certainly need the experience. But I am a compulsive build tweaker - all that time playing MtG, I guess - so the urge to theorize over build construction is irresistible. Assuming I don't send this idea back to the drawing board I imagine it'll make a repeat appearance here later on.

Guild Wars: Fighting Teleway

2007-01-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

Played a GvG match against a so-called "teleway" build last night. For the uninitiated, these builds have every character with an Assassin secondary for Shadow of Haste. They rely on the Shadow to teleport away when under threat via a cancel stance. Right now the cancel stance of choice is Deadly Paradox, which fuels Feigned Neutrality to heal them up. Some teleway builds have no monks at all and some have a more standard-looking build except for all the assassin secondaries.

Playing against this can be frustrating, as you will frequently nearly kill the telewayers only for them to blink out of existence, cackling. I played a teleway build one evening before Nightfall came out, so I have a reasonable idea of good tactics to use against them. Here's the easiest 2 ways to kill the here-one-moment-gone-the-next telewayers.

1) Spike them hard. Skills that were activating against them before they teleported will still complete and hit them (including attack skills) even if they'd be out of range so if you hit them hard enough they'll die.

2) Look for Shadow of Haste activations. When you re-activate Shadow of Haste, your teleport location is the most recent place you activated it, not the original. If you see one of them putting up the Shadow then snare them near there if possible and pressure them. Save an enchantment removal (Shatter Enchantment, preferably) and then when they teleport and put up Feigned the Shatter will usually kill them.

Watch out for them putting up Shadow inside your base - they'll often try to lure you away from the base then teleport back in and drop an Archer or two before you can get back.

Guild Wars: Rankings and ratings

2007-01-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Right now the GW ladder is not exactly frozen, but it's a bit chilled. The low k-value means that ratings are changing very slowly.

I think that quite a lot of PvP players are staying away until they see what happens with the new automated tournament system to be released. In the meantime, I've seen quite a bit of nervous carping over the new system and ratings and rankings in general - even though it's not public knowledge how the tournaments will actually work.

Well, GW players aren't unique in that - MtG players are forever grumbling about similar stuff. Elo rating systems of the kind used in MtG, Chess and GW are well suited to games like Chess where there's a low variance between expected and actual results - if I play Kasparov, the probability of me winning is effectively zero. In Magic, the same isn't true - I can beat someone like Kai Budde if he gets a bad enough draw. In GW, there's a similar problem - albeit not as pronounced - in that teams don't always have the same roster and one build may have advantages over other builds. I happened to talk to Mark Rosewater the other week about this and he did confess that he's never been terribly happy with an Elo rating system for Magic. He prefers accumulated-point systems like the one Bridge uses but personally I'm not so sure that's a great solution. Then again, he's spent a lot more time thinking about it so he might be right.

Anyway. The choice of rating system aside, one of the interesting things in the new system being proposed is that the ladder won't be reset any more. I've seen quite a few GW players fretting about stale rankings hogging the ladder. There's a bunch of easy fixes for this problem, but it seems to me that the easiest would be that a guild has a rating but not a ranking unless they've played 5 GvGs in the previous week. If a guild is camping a high rating that they earned a long time ago but no longer deserve, the inflated rating will fall away swiftly when they start playing again to get back on the ladder.

I'll be curious to see how the new tournament system works out. I was a little worried that I'd never get to play any tournament games - as a dad with 2 little kids it's basically impossible for me to allocate regular 5-hour blocks of undisturbed time without an act of Congress - but a couple of ArenaNet staff have dropped strong hints that I'd get to play tourney games. We shall see. In any event, I suspect that once the tournments start up the ladder games will be seen as practice games for the "real" matches.

On Narcissism

2007-01-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

You've probably seen the "5 things you didn't know about me" meme spreading through the blogosphere. Technically I'm invited (since Josh invoked an invite-everyone-I've-ever-met mechanic) to continue the meme but I think I'll pass. Here's why.

I think there are basically 3 kinds of people reading this post right now.

1) You came here because you find links I post useful.
2) You came here because occasionally you find an opinion of mine interesting.
3) You came here because you came from a PvP Beginner's Guide mirror and are clicking around randomly.

I'm guessing most are in category (3). I don't think there are many, if any, in category (4) - people who know me or are interested in knowing me. So I tend not to post much stuff about myself unless it relates to me failing to update this site because, frankly, I don't think you care and so posting personal stuff seems overly narcissistic.

I could be wrong. But I seriously doubt it.

Guild Wars: Spike Mesmer on Frozen Isle

2007-01-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

Played my first (and only) GvG match since the Xmas break last night on the Frozen Isle. This time round, I was back playing a mesmer and sure enough, I had a lot more fun than when I was monking last time. It was a bit frustrating since I discovered once the match started that my microphone had totally freaked out and so noone could understand anything I said. We lost and sadly I think it's partly my fault because I couldn't call spikes due to the dodgy mic. Ah well, at least now I figured out why it was acting up.

Here's the build I ran. I'm not giving away any secrets here - this is all fairly standard.

Surge Spiker
Fast Casting: 12 (11+1)
Domination Magic: 14 (12+2)
Air Magic: 5
Energy Surge [Elite] (Domination Magic)
Spiritual Pain (Domination Magic)
Wastrel's Demise (Domination Magic)
Shatter Enchantment (Domination Magic)
Gale (Air Magic)
Blackout (Domination Magic)
Glyph of Lesser Energy (Elementalist other)
Resurrection Signet ()

ESurge is good but if it was me, I'd be tempted to run a little more defensive with Blinding Surge and then Diversion instead of Blackout. I do love a bit of Blackout though.

Anyway, this guy isn't putting out significant sustained damage - it's all about the Wastrel's Demise 1/4 second cast stuck on the end of another damage cast. Without a called spike you're not going to drop people and sure enough, that's what happened. I must admit it is extremely satisfying to Shatter the inevitable post-spike prot enchantment and kill someone.

The match was on the Frozen Isle. Due to my previous guild's terrible ranking, my play knowledge of the GvG maps is mostly restricted to their home maps (if your ranking is lower than your opponent you play on your home guild hall map) and so I'd only played 1 or 2 matches on this map. It's one of the more complicated maps so I figured I'd do a little research to give me some of the finer details. Here's the useful stuff:

Long Frozen Isle article by moriz. Note the bodyblocking details.

Short Frozen Isle article by Darial. Note the gate unlock details.

Gale on the Frozen Isle is great because it stops your target moving at range, so you can drop a fleeing enemy onto the ice and give them the ice penalty. I'm still not sure why the ice penalty triggers when you're not moving - doesn't seem to make a lot of sense - but oh well.

After the GvG a couple of people went to bed so we ended up just taking our characters as is and going into Heroes' Ascent. Ended up skipping to the Hall of Heroes on the second run and who should we see there but my ex-alliance-mates Err了. Small world, I guess. We didn't take the hall - once more thanks to yours truly since I missed a key Gale on the red Ghostly
Hero. Mental note: suck less. Ah well, lesson learned and at least we did reasonably well considering we had a GvG build instead of a HA build.

Natural Selection: Whichbot v1.04

2007-01-03T16:27:00.000-08:00

Finally got round to looking at all the checkins masked_carrot (the new dev on the block) has made over in Whichbot-land. Seems like reasonable stuff. I've been neglecting the poor little AI for too long, so it's good to get the update for NS3.2 out.

Here's the release thread over at the WB forums.

Guild Wars: Monking in RA

2007-01-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

First, a little (minor) e-drama. Before the holidays, I left my guild (PIE) - and joined the much larger XoO in their PST GvG division in a bid to improve my play via actually getting more PvP in. Nothing wrong with PIE - a great bunch of guys and if you're looking for a casual, mostly PvE guild they're highly recommended - but I just wasn't scratching the PvP itch.

Anyway, I played a couple of GvGs with XoO and frankly felt like I sucked. Then the power went out due to the giant windstorm. Between family staying over the break and spotty internet connection, no GW was played at chez Clamatius.

Started playing again with more-or-less the same GvG character the last couple of nights and I was still sucking. In random arenas, even. Here's the build, just a standard blessed light monk:

Shadow Light Healer
Monk/Assassin
Divine Favor: 14 (12+2)
Healing Prayers: 9 (8+1)
Protection Prayers: 9 (8+1)
Shadow Arts: 7
Blessed Light [Elite] (Divine Favor)
Gift of Health (Healing Prayers)
Reversal of Fortune (Protection Prayers)
Spirit Bond (Protection Prayers)
Mend Ailment (Protection Prayers)
Shadow of Haste (Shadow Arts)
Dark Escape (Shadow Arts)
Signet of Devotion (Divine Favor)

In RA I had Shield of Absorption instead of Spirit Bond. Anyway, the whole point of this character is that it sacrifices utility for better survivability via the assassin skills but I was so terrible I was dying all the time anyway.

My conclusion from this is that (a) I haven't played monk in a long time and (b) when I did I was being horribly spoilt by the brokenness of good energy management and Divine Boon. More importantly, I've had a lot more practice playing other roles in PvP since I was monking back in the day and I just wasn't enjoying myself compared to playing, say, a ranger or a flashbot. I think I need to concentrate just on playing midlines - and branch out into ranger - instead of trying to monk as well. I guess that's the first New Years resolution...

Happy New Year

2007-01-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

A belated Happy New Year to one and all.

Guild Wars: Designing Team Arena builds

2006-12-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

Solid post by Divineshadows over at GWGuru on designing Team Arena builds.

Windstorm

2006-12-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

Giant windstorm = no power/heat/light/water at home since last Thursday night = no fun.

Did someone flip Mother Nature off or something?

Update: power and civilization is restored. Even got Internet service again last night. Just as well, I was about 1 day away from hunting down animals with a pointy stick.

Guild Wars: Reconnects and party forming UI

2006-12-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

If you're paying attention, you already know about the new features but I figured I should probably mention it, given that both features have been near the top of people's wish list for... oh, I don't know, since release. It'll be interesting to see what the party UI looks like.

I think the PvE crowd's Xmas list had an auction house on it too and I've already seen whining about it.

I've got a metaphor for this. My 3 year old happily sat on Santa's lap this year and Santa asked him what he'd like for Christmas. He replied "a car that goes down ramps... a hammer..... and a dog". Santa replied, giving us a glance, "Well, we'll see about the car and the hammer, but I'm not so sure about the dog".

Guild Wars: Balancing shortlist followup

2006-12-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

Back in August, I wrote a little summary of balance tweaks I thought needed doing. How did Izzy do?

1. Only Warriors do damage.

Hello, Searing Flames elementalists. Oh, and dervishes. Fixed. Pretty much.

2. Elementalist Elites

Instead of the previous you-can-take-Prodigy-or-Prodigy, now there's a bunch of Searing Flames, Blinding Surge, Glyph of Energy and Invoke Lightning eles around as well as the old Prodigy standbys. Fixed.

3. Assassin Elites

The new Shadow Prison and Shadow of Haste have actually displaced Aura of Displacement (pun intended). A few elites showing up here from "Coward!" to Shove, Moebius Strike and Shadow Prison. Admittedly, almost all the Assassin primaries you'll see right now are Shadow Prison. Still, at least there's options. Fixed.

I also mentioned that Eviscerate was the only axe elite being used, but now Shadow Prison has largely displaced it with Dismember being the deep wound skill. Fixed-ish.

Well, 3 for 3. Solutions for those weren't obvious. Tip of the hat to Izzy for that, but a wag of the finger for taking too long to nerf Energizing Finale. Yeah, we know, it was mid-season but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do.

Guild Wars: Match calling in GvG

2006-12-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

Great post by Lioka of XoO over at their forums on match calling in GvG, i.e. the high-level strategic view of the game.

It's at a pretty basic level but I personally suck at this so it was very interesting.

Guild Wars: Making a build

2006-12-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

Decent high-level article on build design by LightningHell over at GWGuru. I meant to link this a while ago but forgot.

Natural Selection 2: Dynamic infestation video

2006-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

As far as I know, this is the first video of the work Charlie and Max have been doing.

Very nice.

Max has some more info over at the NS blog.

Guild Wars: Energizing Finale nerfed

2006-12-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

Not a huge surprise, really, except that usually skill changes only happen between seasons.

* Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds.
* Cyclone Axe: Modified so that it now requires an enemy target.
* Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1.
* "Incoming!": Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds.
* Jagged Bones: Modified so that it may now be used on allied minions.
* Restful Breeze: Modified so that its behavior more accurately matches its description.
* "Stand Your Ground!": Increased energy cost to 10.
* "Watch Yourself!": Changed armor gain to 5..25, based on the Tactics attribute.

In case the "Watch Yourself!" change seems weird, it's because there were a lot of Paragon/Warriors using it with 0 in Tactics to trigger the renews-on-shout-expiration echoes. All the significant changes here are nerfing defensive Paragons. The offensive "Go for the eyes!" Paragons are still pretty decent. However, the offensive Paragons may well not see as much play now they're not triggering Energizing Finale.

Guild Wars: Monking guide

2006-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

An excellent monking guide by Makkert went up over at GWGuru today. Highly recommended, even if you only monk occasionally.

Guild Wars: Guild Wiki mirror

2006-11-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

Guild Wiki has rapidly become the GW reference of choice. Sadly, after the release of Nightfall, the increased traffic has pretty much flattened it and the site isn't responding at present.

Luckily, someone (alas, I don't know who) had the bright idea of putting up a static mirror. Many thanks to whoever it is.

Guild Wars: Dervish scythe attacks

2006-11-13T14:07:00.000-08:00

Useful analysis by Warskull over at GWGuru of all the Dervish scythe attack skills. Handy for all those people out there starting up dervishes (like me).

Guild Wars: Wreckingball (Necromancer PvE)

2006-11-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

I played this build a month or two ago and it works pretty well. It's a very aggressive setup which suits my playstyle. Ensign is the wizard at work here.

Offering of Blood*
Order of Pain
Blood Ritual
Rotting Flesh
Animate Bone Horror
Animate Bone Fiend
Blood of the Master
Resurrection Signet / Hardres of choice

12+4 Death Magic
9+2 Blood Magic
9+1 Soul Reaping

Weapon with an enchanting part, armor of choice + Bloodstained Boots.

Your plan here is that being a MM is basically a matter of a couple of Animates + Blood of the Master, so why not be an Orders necro at the same time?

Note that this plan absolutely requires you to bring as many physical damagers as possible - warriors, rangers, paragons, etc. It should be even easier to arrange now you can bring Heroes. Note that Barrage + Order of Pain = good.

There's probably a nicer way to make this with some of the new Nightfall skills, but you may want to use it to go get those skills.

Guild Wars: "Go For The Eyes!"

2006-11-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

Handy tip by the always-insightful Ensign over at GWGuru:

At 12 spec, "Go for the Eyes!" is worth (on average) 14 damage on a sword, 19 damage on a bow or spear, 24 damage on an axe or hammer, and 36 damage on a scythe.

If you have four physicals on your team with random weapons, the skill is worth around 80 damage as a minimum, and it could be worth over 100 per use with Scythers. That damage gets compressed into a spike as well. The skill is really good, no question - who doesn't want to spend 4 adrenaline for 90 damage a shot?

Guild Wars: Nightfall

2006-11-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of weeks of Nightfall now. I haven't been playing perhaps as much as I'd like, so I haven't got that far through the PvE since I'll usually play PvP if I can anyway. I wasted a bunch of time playing an Elementalist in the PvE before realising that I'd be better off spending my time figuring out what makes the new classes tick.

So, my reaction to the game: in a nutshell, great. The new Hero system in particular really adds a lot to the PvE but there are a lot of little details that add up. Artwork is gorgeous as usual - running around the sandy beaches, I caught a flash of a shark's tail in the deep water last night. The new "master difficulty" quests are a nice touch - although with my limited progress so far I haven't found anything too tough. The community reaction has been very positive and it's hard to find "hate" posts as there was after the release of Factions.

In PvP, the 2 new classes - Dervish and Paragon - are seeing a lot of play but so far noone has figured out anything totally broken. There's a few new skills that seem very strong but it's unclear if they're actually overpowered. Keep your eye on Rampage as One, Searing Flames and Energizing Finale. A polite golf clap goes to Izzy (Isaiah Cartwright, ArenaNet's skill designer) for managing to create distinctive and useful new professions. The metagame hasn't stabilized yet and so all kinds of crazy Dervish and Paragon builds are showing up. Fire elementalists with Searing Flames are all over the place right now which makes a pleasant change.

I'm playing a Dervish in PvE right now and it's a lot of fun. Paragon's up next.

The new PvP template feature released just before Nightfall - saving and loading skill and equipment settings - is really good too. There's only 2 things that need improving with the feature:
1) When you save an equipment template, it only saves the current weapon instead of all your weapon slots. This is dumb and wastes a bunch of time when you're re-loading a character.
2) Since you can't copy out of the GW chatbox, there's no easy in-game way to send a template to someone. This isn't too bad because you can just post it in the TeamSpeak channel or whatever, it's more of a quibble.

Guild Wars: Improving your guild

2006-11-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Nice little article by STINGER of KT on improving GvG play for newer players.

The only quibble I have is that creating PvE characters for PvP really isn't necessary any more. You'd be much better off spending the gazillion hours of farming you'd need to make comparable equipment to the free PvP stuff just playing PvP instead. This is especially true now that the faction flow in PvP is fast enough that unlocking skills through PvP is actually viable.

Guild Wars Nightfall ships

2006-10-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

And more importantly, I have a copy. Looking at the latest skill tweaks, time to go roll up an Elementalist.

Guild Wars: Massive updates pre-Nightfall

2006-10-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

Massive changes including the stuff I wrote about previously and then some. A phenomenal update. So much is in there that I just don't have time to write about it right now.

If you're playing GW, go read the changelog right now. If you're not, you should be. If you were playing but aren't, go read the changelog just in case you need to start again.

Glyph of Elemental Power is looking hot. Boon Prots are looking sad. So many skill updates it's hard to take in.

Guild Wars: Nightfall PvP updates

2006-10-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

Despite Nightfall's announced "PvE focus", there's quite a bit on offer to PvP players and the latest GW Insider gave out some more juicy details.

Build Templates.
With the click of a button you'll be able to:

* Save to Template. Save a build of skills and attributes to your computer. You can even access these files outside of the game, allowing you to transfer them from computer to computer.
* Load from Template. Upload a build from a saved file on your computer into the game.
* Manage Templates. Rename, delete, and move saved templates.
Hero Battles.
To win a Hero Battle, you must outscore your opponent. Points come in two ways: [1] holding the center control point and [2] killing members of the enemy team. In addition to the center control point, each Hero Battle map has additional control points that confer bonuses such as additional Health or control of an NPC ally. Control points are captured much like the points you can capture in Alliance Battles.
Near-equivalence between PvP and PvE characters. Previously, really competitive PvP players had to grind their way to getting the best PvE equipment.
Part of our goal was to make it so players didn’t have to delete and remake PvP characters so often, so we’re also adding a “PvP Equipment Builder.” You can use this Equipment Builder whenever you’re in an outpost with a PvP-only character and make any item you could make during PvP character creation. Unlocked a new rune at the Priest of Balthazar? You can immediately make yourself some armor with that rune in it. Want four full weapon sets? No problem.
In-Guild Observer Mode.
And for everyone out there who likes to play a little GvG, we’ve upgraded Observer Mode to include recent GvG battles by your guild.

Add 2 new professions and a whole bunch of tasty-looking skills. Shake well and serve with relish.

Guild Wars: Nightfall release party

2006-10-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Trundled around behind Tey (my wife) for a couple of hours and knocked back a few Moorish-themed cocktails. Unlike the Factions release party, there wasn't any real Nightfall PvP action. Alas. Instead it was really a party for the devs - drinks, music, belly dancers and a rah-rah "Making of Nightfall" video.

They had a few machines set up but when I took a quick look everyone was just playing PvE. I have a pretty good idea of how that's going to work from the preview weekend - I was hoping to get some juice on the build template interface or the Hero PvP but no dice. Ah well.

Alright, full disclosure. I already know pretty much exactly how the build template stuff will work but since they weren't displaying it on the party machines I guess it's not fair game to talk about it yet.

Anyway, it was nice to talk to some of Tey's ex-TSR and Wizards friends (e.g. Jeff Grubb, Will McDermott). Jeff seemed pretty pumped up about the new cutscene stuff in Nightfall - apparently the cutscene tools for the previous chapters were fairly basic. I hope he's right to be excited - the cutscenes in Factions & Prophecies were pretty weak.

Not much actual information in the "making of" film - just the usual "this is how you make an AAA title stuff" which I already know. The only tantalizing tidbit was Jeff talking about how they listen to fans about things they want like easier party forming. If they added a better party forming interface, that'd be big news but given it hasn't been mentioned before odds on it's still in development.

That's about all I have to report this time round. Thanks to Izzy for rescuing me from MapQuest's disastrous directions!

Update: courtesy of atray & Avoc over at GWOnline, a pic of one of the belly dancers.

Guild Wars: Nightfall release party tonight

2006-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Nightfall release party is tonight. I already had an invite this time round before the contest was announced so unlike last time I didn't suck up one of the fan slots.

Guild Wars: I Fail

2006-10-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Possibly my least-skilled bit of PvP ever last night. Since everyone was busy farming green items in Cantha during the triple drop weekend, noone wanted to play any real PvP.

So I was once again playing a couple of rounds of Random Arenas using the Razorwire ranger I wrote about previously. One particular round came down to me killing the 3rd guy on their team at the same time the opposing team's last guy finished off our 3rd. I'd used my res sig, so now it was just me against him.

He was playing a toucher variant with Life Siphon instead of Throw Dirt. Razorwire really ought to win this matchup since you can Distracting Shot the Life Siphon and just kite around shooting him occasionally. If you get time you put up Melandru's Arrows for a bit of bleeding. He can't actually do damage unless he touches you so that should be pretty much game. Just have to make sure you don't use Pin Down when he has a defense stance.

I lost.

Why? I started out with 50hp after I got rid of the previous guy and so I was focused on my health - one Vampiric Bite and I'd die. I stayed thinking about using Pin Down to get far enough away for Trolls Unguent so much that I spaced out and totally forgot about interrupting his stuff. Dumb.

The moral of this story is that you have to find time to make sure you have a plan for winning even while dealing with micro. I'd have to disable the Life Siphon to win so I'd have to cancel Troll's if necessary to get an interrupt on it.

One last note on this sad tale - when you're playing against touchers, you can normally keep Frenzy up the whole time since Frenzy's double damage drawback doesn't apply against life stealing effects like Vampiric Bite and Touch.

Guild Wars: Flamingo Frenzy

2006-10-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently there was a Charm Animal bug in the Nightfall preview.

Pretty amusing.

Guild Wars Nightfall Preview Weekend

2006-09-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Well, this is a lot later than I'd planned. Deadlines suck.

Anyway, some of my quick impressions from the Nightfall preview. My guild was PvEing the whole time so I don't really have any PvP comments. Apparently it was just as well because there was a bug in one skill which caused Guild Lords to just die - no, really, they ended up rolling back the guild ladder - so PvP over the weekend was a little lacking.

Heroes (customizable henchmen) are going to be great. I'm all about build tweaking and this just adds that much more. The only downside - as it was, the average pick-up group (PUG) member was worse than a henchman. I may never play in a PUG in PvE again.
Artwork was gorgeous as usual.
Dervishes are going to just rip up PvE. Area-of-effect default attacks are going to be great. I expect there will be an absolute sea of Dervishes in every outpost.
Paragons definitely have a lot of useful and interesting skills.
Lots of the previewed skills look strong in both PvE and PvP. The overall power level appears higher than Factions.
It appears that the levelling speed is somewhere between Prophecies and Factions.

After the preview, I put in my Nightfall pre-order and picked up the "bonus pack" this week.

Guild Wars: Razorwire in Random Arena

2006-09-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

It's a bit quiet in the guild hall at the moment. I'm hoping it's just the lull before Nightfall. So, I've had a little time to mess around. Here's a little bit of fun for you. Frenzy Ranger. It's a great way to work on your positional awareness. Hint - when you have Frenzy up, watch for people without armour waving their hands at you. It might be bad.

This is Silmor of iQ's RazorWire R/W build. See the linked article for the full scoop and a bunch of play advice. I'll give you the build summary here to whet your appetite.

Expertise: 8+1
Marksmanship: 12+3
Wilderness Survival: 10+1+1

Frenzy
Rush
Distracting Shot
Savage Shot
Pin Down
Melandru's Arrows (elite)
Troll Unguent
Resurrection Signet

Equipment 1: Ebon Short Bow of Fortitude
Equipment 2: Vampiric Short Bow of Fortitude

It's a lot better than it looks. It's not the absolute best ranger build you could play right now, but it's pretty close. That's more than you need given some of the other people on your team will probably start off the round by putting up Mending.

Guild Wars: Skill update assessment

2006-09-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

Alright. My semi-clueless take on the highlights from the lengthy list of changes.

Shadow of Haste: decreased Energy cost to 5, increased the duration to 30..60, and decreased the movement speed by 15%.

AoD-lite? Interesting on both primary and secondary, worth a try with a switch stance. In an ideal world, it'd have less than 30s recharge, I guess.

Dash: decreased recharge time to 8 seconds.

Pretty tasty. Dash + SoH on a Monk could be nice.

Repeating Strike: increased damage to 10..30.

Nice DPS if you don't miss. I'd guess it'd have to be on a R/A as before.

Temple Strike: decreased recharge time to 20 seconds, and increased duration to 1..10 seconds.

Temple Strike was awesome when you actually land it. Now, would it be worth sacrificing AoD? Probably not but it's more tempting.

Siphon Speed: increased movement speed reduction to 33%, and this spell now has half range.

This was already pretty good but in a fairly weak attr line. Now looks very nice - maybe tempting on a W/A, even.

Black Lotus Strike: reduced recharge time to 20 seconds.

Very nice start to the combo.

Unsuspecting Strike: increased conditional damage to 15..75.

Pointy. That's going to hurt. There was a distinct lack of a really nasty lead attack - hence everyone doing their level best not to run one, instead using Shock -> Falling Spider.

Still think the profession will suck in PvE but there's not much you can do, esp. in all-the-enemies-explode-land of Factions.

Balthazar's Aura: decreased duration to 8 seconds.
Zealot's Fire: increased recharge time to 45 seconds.

So long, Smiting.

Tiger's Fury/Bestial Fury: decreased the attack speed to 25%.
Irresistible Blow: increased recharge time to 6 seconds, decreased damage to 5..20.

A bit of thumper nerfage. Does 25% on Tiger's mean you miss the deep wound on Hammer Bash -> Crushing Blow? Not sure.

Eviscerate: decreased damage to 1..31.

Still seems like the best axe elite.

Ritualist stuff - well, wow. A lot of changes. But mostly:

Shelter: increased Energy cost to 25, increased damage taken to 75..45, decreased recharge time to 45 seconds.

A very significant nerf to the best defensive Ritualist skill. Together with all the spirit recharge buffs, it's looking like the effective-but-deathly-dull defensive Ritual Lord build can be put away for a while. The new Channeling skills and damage spirits sound a lot better but I'm not sure they'll be good enough for actual PvP use. I'll have to try it.

Broad Head Arrow: decreased Energy cost to 15.

Last time I did a TA run we had a ranger wrecking casters with this, even with the increased cost. I'll be interested to see what he does with it now...

Extinguish: increased cast time to 1 second, increased recharge time to 12 seconds.

At last now you can try to land an interrupt - and especially, Distracting Shot. Serious help for condition pressure builds - I'm expecting to see significantly more Tainted Flesh.

Ether Prodigy: increased damage per Energy to 3.

Strange but true. Not sure why this really makes any difference - seems like a "well, we couldn't come up with a real fix so this will be better than nothing in the meantime".

Divine Boon: increased recharge time to 10 seconds, decreased amount healed to 15..60.

Boon was really, really good. Now it's not as good but it still seems playable.

And there you have it. The biggest changes, obviously, to Assassin and Ritualist mean there's a ton of experimentation room in there to find out some new workable builds.

Guild Wars: Balance update

2006-09-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

A pretty sweeping update to skill balance today. Some really key skills and GvG staples in the list like Ether Prodigy and Divine Boon. Notably, both Assassin and Ritualist skills got some major changes.

Also, the GvG format was updated to make it substantially faster - Victory or Death now at 20 minutes instead of 30 and one Bodyguard was removed.

I'm not going to chip in with my 2 cents till I've had a chance to think about all this some more. There's a discussion about the changes going on over at Guild Wars Guru.

Guild Wars: Nightfall Preview

2006-09-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

The next Nightfall preview was announced to be from Friday September 22th to Sunday September 24th. Hopefully I'll get to play this time - although I'm also trying to arrange going to the M:tG Time Spiral Release tournament downtown that Saturday.

Update: the official page is up with much more detail. Looks like we're going to see the new Hero system too, which should be interesting.

Guild Wars: Upcoming PvP Unlock Pack price update

2006-09-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently someone over at ArenaNet agreed with me. Shortly, you won't have to own Prophecies to buy the Prophecies unlock pack. Additionally, they are going to do the same deal for Factions after Nightfall comes out.

They will remove the $9.99 "unlock a profession" option though, so if you did want that for some reason you'd better snap it up now.

Guild Wars: PC Gamer minipet

2006-09-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

Apparently the next issue of PC Gamer will have a bunch of Guild Wars: Nightfall coverage. It'll also have a special per-issue code that unlocks a special minipet. The minipet won't be one of the existing ones, it's a promo item.

Guild Wars: PvP Unlock Packs, part two

2006-09-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

So, predictably the GW community is divided as to whether the sale of PvP unlock packs is a good idea or not.

There's a massive amount of whining over at the more PvE-centric GWOnline - a 50+ page thread already. There's even some whining in the PvP forum at GWGuru although generally the response there seems more positive.

It's unclear exactly what they are complaining about - it seems generally that the sky-is-falling PvE people expect that ArenaNet will start charging for everything, including PvE items etc. That would devalue their perceived character value that they've farmed their little hearts out for.

Seems overwhelmingly unlikely.

The whole debate reminds me a bit of the real-life drama where gay marriage gets people upset. Apparently that devalues people's own marriage (unlike, say, Ms. Britney Spears getting married for 20 seconds in Vegas). This is even weirder than that argument, if anything, because it's purely PvP and has nothing to do with PvE. Admittedly, in the gay marriage case it's clearly an example of barely-veiled homophobia and the "devaluing marriage" argument is just a proxy.

Skill unlocks are an option which don't even apply to the latest content. There's nothing forcing you to buy them and it doesn't affect PvE at all. It just means that it's easier for new PvP players to catch up with the otherwise mammoth grind required to unlock everything. Personally, I think that having an unlock system for skills isn't all bad - gotta tap into that operant conditioning, after all - but right now the Balthazar's Faction system needs some tweaking to let people do all their unlocking directly from PvP instead of making it more efficient to play PvE.

Now, as Ensign points out, the right price point is debatable but overall this development is a good thing. Obviously the price is something they can fix. The price does seem rather high, especially if you have to own Prophecies too - which is apparently the case right now.