I don't know what to make of the facts that are dripping out of the gamescom footage from Guild Wars 2. First there was the "damage in the thousands" silliness. Then today I learn via Ravious of some more bizarre design decisions.
Example the first: "using a skill will no longer automatically put the character in range of the enemy. Instead the spell will cast as normal, fly towards the enemy as normal, and then fall short. As it falls short it then tells the player “out of range.”
I don't know what the rationale for this is. Yes it's more "realistic". It also sounds like a pain in the arse and a good way to completely waste mana/cooldowns.
Speaking of which: Elite skills apparently have a recharge time of 720 seconds. You may recall me harping on about how revolutionary the short cooldowns of Guild Wars are a while ago. Now they're doing a 180 on this as though their initial success was just a coincidence.
Could it be that ArenaNet are not the game design prodigees I've been talking them up to be? Or maybe the people who made the smart decisions on the first game aren't with the company anymore? Or has ArenaNet been infiltrated by the Zerg mastermind that rules over Blizzard? Tune in next time for answers to these and other questions readers, same fail time, same fail channel...
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Zerg Rush : A Case Report
My experience with the 1v1 aspect of the first StarCraft didn't last long. I was happily mining minerals in my base and contemplating how lovely it would be to cultivate my ultimate fleet of 10+ Carriers to demolish the enemy, when half a dozen Zerglings ran into my base. I had not yet even created my first military unit and was promptly crushed, despite a valiant effort from my army of workers. The game lasted about 3 minutes.
How could I be crushed so mercilessly? I, Melf, Slayer of Noobs? Possibly this mysterious gentleman was some kind of Korean with "crazy micro" living in a net cafe. I knew that I could never pull off such a feat of human dexterity. The entire reason that I had selected the Protoss race was for their smaller (but higher value) number of units, to reduce the amount of clicking that my feeble non-Korean brain could accomplish.
Enter StarCraft II. A little older and wiser now, I knew that I would face the same "dirty" tactics again. There was only one way to prepare myself, to truly know my enemy. I would have to play Zerg and get this rush thing down pat so that I could defend against it.
Of course there was no way I would just jump into 1v1 battles to try this. Instead I practiced against the AI. StarCraft II is a huge step above its predecessor in terms of skirmishing vs AI. There are 6 difficulty levels, and the AI does not "cheat". It does not receive extra units or resources. It is simply smarter in terms of the order it builds units in, makes smarter decisions in battle (e.g. sometimes the enemy will run when they see that your army is larger, before the first drop of blood is shed), and of course micro-manages like a Korean on speed. After floundering around on Medium difficulty for a while, I moved up the ranks, trying different combinations of build orders until I was able to beat the AI on Insane difficulty. This shocked me - I had never managed to beat Insane difficulty with my beloved Protoss, and in fact I did it here in under 5 minutes.
There was something exciting I realized from all of this. I realized that this did not require "cracy micro uber hax" after all. In fact, it requires a lot less clicking and multi-attention-splitting craziness. Why let my games proceed to be longer than I need to? The longer the game proceeds the more units, more upgrades, more expansions, and more backdoor tactics there are to deal with. I get worse at the game by the minute!
Now I was ready to unearth my strategy on the unsuspecting n00bs of BattleNet. First, let's see what we're dealing with here:
This is the post-match "build order" of both players in one of the games I played. You can see that I make just one worker unit (Drone) in the beginning, before saving all my pennies for a Spawning Pool. This will allow me to make my little precious Zerglings. While I'm waiting for the Pool to finish building I make another Drone, and an Overlord to nourish my army. When the Pool finishes building I have exactly enough minerals to convert my 3 larvae into 6 Zerglings. With a waypoint set into the enemy's base, in no time at all these hatch and scurry off. With my base hot-keyed it's a simple matter of hitting 0 (select base), S (select larvae), Z (make zerglings) every time I see that I have another 50 minerals gathered. This brings a steady stream of reinforcements in and lets me focus on micro-managing the fragile Zerglings to make sure they don't do silly things like get slaughtered by an army of workers.
The fellow on the right was playing smartly. He starts off with a few probes to boost his economy, lays down a supply source (pylon) to keep them coming, and saves up enough for a couple of Gateways. This allows him to start creating Zealots, a strong melee unit that is the only early defense the Protoss has time to muster against my Zerg rush.
What you can't see from this is that he is also placing these buildings to try and prevent early rush tactics. Each base has a narrow choke point leading to it - he has actually placed both gateways and a pylon such that my poor little pets can not make it up the ramp without first chomping through his buildings. This theoretically buys him enough time to make enough units to stop me, and then trump me with his superior economy. However, using a pylon to make this wall was a bad idea because it powers his buildings. Chomp, chomp, chomp (eventually). There is a Zealot waiting for me on the other side but my 'Lings stream on past so that they can surround him, and once he is down go and begin munching his other pylon. This fellow does not make it easy for me - he sends his entire army of workers to come and harrass me. Fortunately my steady stream of reinforcements allows me to ignore them and get that pylon down. Once this happens his Gateways have no power and can not create units; there are no more Zealots to deal with and I slaughter the rest of the worker army at my leisure. A bare 3 minutes after the game started:
Now, I do feel a little bad. But this is all in the name of research, you understand. We must learn to fight the Zerg menace from the inside if we are to have any chance of prevailing in this war against the cheap, dirty tactics employed by the BattleNet hordes.
*gurgle*
*rasp*
How could I be crushed so mercilessly? I, Melf, Slayer of Noobs? Possibly this mysterious gentleman was some kind of Korean with "crazy micro" living in a net cafe. I knew that I could never pull off such a feat of human dexterity. The entire reason that I had selected the Protoss race was for their smaller (but higher value) number of units, to reduce the amount of clicking that my feeble non-Korean brain could accomplish.
Enter StarCraft II. A little older and wiser now, I knew that I would face the same "dirty" tactics again. There was only one way to prepare myself, to truly know my enemy. I would have to play Zerg and get this rush thing down pat so that I could defend against it.
Of course there was no way I would just jump into 1v1 battles to try this. Instead I practiced against the AI. StarCraft II is a huge step above its predecessor in terms of skirmishing vs AI. There are 6 difficulty levels, and the AI does not "cheat". It does not receive extra units or resources. It is simply smarter in terms of the order it builds units in, makes smarter decisions in battle (e.g. sometimes the enemy will run when they see that your army is larger, before the first drop of blood is shed), and of course micro-manages like a Korean on speed. After floundering around on Medium difficulty for a while, I moved up the ranks, trying different combinations of build orders until I was able to beat the AI on Insane difficulty. This shocked me - I had never managed to beat Insane difficulty with my beloved Protoss, and in fact I did it here in under 5 minutes.
There was something exciting I realized from all of this. I realized that this did not require "cracy micro uber hax" after all. In fact, it requires a lot less clicking and multi-attention-splitting craziness. Why let my games proceed to be longer than I need to? The longer the game proceeds the more units, more upgrades, more expansions, and more backdoor tactics there are to deal with. I get worse at the game by the minute!
Now I was ready to unearth my strategy on the unsuspecting n00bs of BattleNet. First, let's see what we're dealing with here:
This is the post-match "build order" of both players in one of the games I played. You can see that I make just one worker unit (Drone) in the beginning, before saving all my pennies for a Spawning Pool. This will allow me to make my little precious Zerglings. While I'm waiting for the Pool to finish building I make another Drone, and an Overlord to nourish my army. When the Pool finishes building I have exactly enough minerals to convert my 3 larvae into 6 Zerglings. With a waypoint set into the enemy's base, in no time at all these hatch and scurry off. With my base hot-keyed it's a simple matter of hitting 0 (select base), S (select larvae), Z (make zerglings) every time I see that I have another 50 minerals gathered. This brings a steady stream of reinforcements in and lets me focus on micro-managing the fragile Zerglings to make sure they don't do silly things like get slaughtered by an army of workers.
The fellow on the right was playing smartly. He starts off with a few probes to boost his economy, lays down a supply source (pylon) to keep them coming, and saves up enough for a couple of Gateways. This allows him to start creating Zealots, a strong melee unit that is the only early defense the Protoss has time to muster against my Zerg rush.
What you can't see from this is that he is also placing these buildings to try and prevent early rush tactics. Each base has a narrow choke point leading to it - he has actually placed both gateways and a pylon such that my poor little pets can not make it up the ramp without first chomping through his buildings. This theoretically buys him enough time to make enough units to stop me, and then trump me with his superior economy. However, using a pylon to make this wall was a bad idea because it powers his buildings. Chomp, chomp, chomp (eventually). There is a Zealot waiting for me on the other side but my 'Lings stream on past so that they can surround him, and once he is down go and begin munching his other pylon. This fellow does not make it easy for me - he sends his entire army of workers to come and harrass me. Fortunately my steady stream of reinforcements allows me to ignore them and get that pylon down. Once this happens his Gateways have no power and can not create units; there are no more Zealots to deal with and I slaughter the rest of the worker army at my leisure. A bare 3 minutes after the game started:
Now, I do feel a little bad. But this is all in the name of research, you understand. We must learn to fight the Zerg menace from the inside if we are to have any chance of prevailing in this war against the cheap, dirty tactics employed by the BattleNet hordes.
*gurgle*
*rasp*
Sunday, August 8, 2010
StarCrafting...
I've been playing StarCraft 2 now for for about a week and a half. Most of this time was spent doing the campaign or learning strategies for each of the races in co-op or custom games. It's all been fun, but my PvP heart was yearning for more...
So this weekend, Melf and I decided it was time to hit the big leagues. We skipped the rest of the practice league and jumped straight into some 2v2 team quick matches... oh boy...
For our first game, Melf and I both played Protoss. We'd been practicing a joint Warp Gate maneuver against 2 very hard AI with success, so we thought we'd use it as our starting tactic. Our opponents were playing Protoss and Terran. The game started beautifully. Not a single mistake from Melf or myself. The nerves were racing and the adrenaline was pumping. Every second of the initial base building was crucial for success. I was so focused, a passer by could have sworn I was having a staring competition with my computer. By about the 4 minute mark we both had a Probe scout close to their bases (hidden of course) and deployed a Pylon each. We both had 3 Gateways ready for when our Cybernetics Core finished the 'Warp Gate Upgrade' research (Crono Boosted of course). When your entire strategy relies on a single piece of research being complete, you watch that progress bar like a hawk. The second it finished, we converted our Gateways into Warp Gates and Melf and I warped in 3 Stalkers each to our hidden Pylons. We each warped in a second wave of 3 Stalkers before unleashing hell on our unsuspecting opponents. They both put up a good fight, but it was no match for a dozen Stalkers and another dozen on the way. When the 'You are Victorious' message box appeared, I sat back in my chair and smiled. This game is seriously awesome.
"Another game?", I asked Melf on vent.
"Of course", he replied.
We went on to play another 7 or so games with varying success. We managed to win 3 in a row at one stage, netting us both the 'Team Hot Streak: 3' achievement.
As the evening set in, Melf's girlfriend Lillsy joined us, and our 2v2 turned into 3v3. We played through to about 3am. Probably the most memorable game was the one where my base got destroyed in the first 4 minutes of the game and it was left to Lillsy and Melf and hold the team. I managed to save a probe and Melf patched me some minerals to get another based started. Unfortunately that got destroyed as well within the next few minutes. I was almost ready to surrender, but I thought I'd hang around and see what happened. I still had 1 Probe to my name which I hid in Lillsy's base. Melf and Lillsy somehow managed to hold their own against 3 opponents while I started a new base inside of one of Lillsy's expansions. Progress was slow, but I managed to get back on my feet. I amassed an army of Zealots and sent them out of Lillsy's base ready for action. To my absolute amazement, there was nothing left to kill. Melf and Lillsy had won the day without my help. Hat's off to their ninja skillz. My Zealot army was cool though ;)
Here's a screen shot of this weekend's results:
Good times...
So this weekend, Melf and I decided it was time to hit the big leagues. We skipped the rest of the practice league and jumped straight into some 2v2 team quick matches... oh boy...
For our first game, Melf and I both played Protoss. We'd been practicing a joint Warp Gate maneuver against 2 very hard AI with success, so we thought we'd use it as our starting tactic. Our opponents were playing Protoss and Terran. The game started beautifully. Not a single mistake from Melf or myself. The nerves were racing and the adrenaline was pumping. Every second of the initial base building was crucial for success. I was so focused, a passer by could have sworn I was having a staring competition with my computer. By about the 4 minute mark we both had a Probe scout close to their bases (hidden of course) and deployed a Pylon each. We both had 3 Gateways ready for when our Cybernetics Core finished the 'Warp Gate Upgrade' research (Crono Boosted of course). When your entire strategy relies on a single piece of research being complete, you watch that progress bar like a hawk. The second it finished, we converted our Gateways into Warp Gates and Melf and I warped in 3 Stalkers each to our hidden Pylons. We each warped in a second wave of 3 Stalkers before unleashing hell on our unsuspecting opponents. They both put up a good fight, but it was no match for a dozen Stalkers and another dozen on the way. When the 'You are Victorious' message box appeared, I sat back in my chair and smiled. This game is seriously awesome.
"Another game?", I asked Melf on vent.
"Of course", he replied.
We went on to play another 7 or so games with varying success. We managed to win 3 in a row at one stage, netting us both the 'Team Hot Streak: 3' achievement.
As the evening set in, Melf's girlfriend Lillsy joined us, and our 2v2 turned into 3v3. We played through to about 3am. Probably the most memorable game was the one where my base got destroyed in the first 4 minutes of the game and it was left to Lillsy and Melf and hold the team. I managed to save a probe and Melf patched me some minerals to get another based started. Unfortunately that got destroyed as well within the next few minutes. I was almost ready to surrender, but I thought I'd hang around and see what happened. I still had 1 Probe to my name which I hid in Lillsy's base. Melf and Lillsy somehow managed to hold their own against 3 opponents while I started a new base inside of one of Lillsy's expansions. Progress was slow, but I managed to get back on my feet. I amassed an army of Zealots and sent them out of Lillsy's base ready for action. To my absolute amazement, there was nothing left to kill. Melf and Lillsy had won the day without my help. Hat's off to their ninja skillz. My Zealot army was cool though ;)
Here's a screen shot of this weekend's results:
Good times...
Monday, August 2, 2010
StarCraft 2 first impressions
After reading a few reviews prior to purchasing the game, I was expecting to play SC1 but with better graphics and higher resolutions. Well, yeah.. it pretty much is. I don't want to repeat what you could read in other professional reviews, so I'll keep it short. Is SC2 worth buying?
If you are like me and enjoy hardcore PvP on casual terms, then yes SC2 is definitely worth buying. They've made PvP convenient and awesome! There is a 'Quick Game' button that launches you into a PvP 1v1 match against someone of 'equal' skill. I honestly couldn't design a casual PvP game better than that. Click, boom your in! Pow, pow! Awesome!
At my level (very noob), your average game goes for about 35 minutes, which is perfect for slotting into those free time gaps. I can see this becoming the TF2 of RTS.
As another positive, it's very easy to play with friends and there are achievements and unlocks that you can showcase for your e-peen. The single player campaign is pretty good too. They also have challenge missions that are like playing mods from SC1. For example: Defeat 3 waves of enemies with limited units. You buy the most awesome RTS ever made and get a bunch of free mini games... can't complain.
I spent the entire weekend playing it and I want to keep playing it. Starcraft 2 was definitely worth the money I paid, and then some. Love it!
If you are like me and enjoy hardcore PvP on casual terms, then yes SC2 is definitely worth buying. They've made PvP convenient and awesome! There is a 'Quick Game' button that launches you into a PvP 1v1 match against someone of 'equal' skill. I honestly couldn't design a casual PvP game better than that. Click, boom your in! Pow, pow! Awesome!
At my level (very noob), your average game goes for about 35 minutes, which is perfect for slotting into those free time gaps. I can see this becoming the TF2 of RTS.
As another positive, it's very easy to play with friends and there are achievements and unlocks that you can showcase for your e-peen. The single player campaign is pretty good too. They also have challenge missions that are like playing mods from SC1. For example: Defeat 3 waves of enemies with limited units. You buy the most awesome RTS ever made and get a bunch of free mini games... can't complain.
I spent the entire weekend playing it and I want to keep playing it. Starcraft 2 was definitely worth the money I paid, and then some. Love it!
Friday, July 30, 2010
What does a GW2 level actually mean?
I've just finished reading a blog post by Scott from Pumping Irony on the Guild Wars 2 leveling info released by Arena.net earlier today. For those that haven't read it yet, Arena.net have announced the level cap for Guild Wars 2 will be 80. As Scott pointed out, this seems like an awfully diku WoW inspired move by Arena.net. I'm not entirely inclined to agree. What I'd like to point out is that we still don't know what gaining a level in GW2 will actually means. For example, do we gain attribute points per level? I still haven't read any info released from Arena.net that suggests there are even going to be attribute points. What restrictions does the level of your character put on game play? Again, we still don't know yet. How long does it take to reach the max level? Until we get more information, the level cap might as well be 5000. It makes no difference.
What we do know, is that level progression will be linear and not exponential like most MMOs. That gets my tick of approval. Did we learn any other new information from the latest post aside from the cap being 80? Nope, not really. So the only thing I'm upset about with the latest blog post from Arena.net, is that there really wasn't much information in the post.
It would seem odd to me that Arena.net would move away from the winning leveling formula they had with GW1. If I had to guess, I would say that your level will only restrict the XP you get from kills. Same as in GW1. This forces players to move through the story/game if they want to progress the level of their character. Given the amount of design changes so far with GW2, it's best not to assume to much. So in conclusion, I only have to say this:
"Arena.net more info please!"
What we do know, is that level progression will be linear and not exponential like most MMOs. That gets my tick of approval. Did we learn any other new information from the latest post aside from the cap being 80? Nope, not really. So the only thing I'm upset about with the latest blog post from Arena.net, is that there really wasn't much information in the post.
It would seem odd to me that Arena.net would move away from the winning leveling formula they had with GW1. If I had to guess, I would say that your level will only restrict the XP you get from kills. Same as in GW1. This forces players to move through the story/game if they want to progress the level of their character. Given the amount of design changes so far with GW2, it's best not to assume to much. So in conclusion, I only have to say this:
"Arena.net more info please!"
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Crimson is back!
It's been well over 6 months since I last posted here on the blog. I will explain why, but the short answer is that time constraints caused me to have a lifestyle change.
Just after Christmas (now 6 months ago) my girlfriend and I moved in with her parents to save money for a our own house. This threw a bit of a spanner into the works of my daily gaming routine. My gf's parents house is located 1.5 hrs travel time away from both mine and my gf's work. Essentially my gf and I were getting up at 5:30am for work and getting home around 7:30pm. Once dinner was cooked I'd get about an hour and a half of gaming in before I needed to be asleep ready for the next day. Shortly after starting this routine, my gf decided that she wanted to start doing a TV writing course after work. The downside to this, is that we catch the train home. Her classes wouldn't finish until 9pm at night, which meant she would have to catch the late train home. Unfortunately our train line has some shady characters around and it gets even worse the later you catch it. So of course I had to wait around and catch the train with her to ensure her safety. This meant that I had a gap between 5:30pm and 9pm after work where I would do nothing. I couldn't play games because my gaming rig was 1.5 hrs away. What was I to do? On our second late train home of this routine, we encountered a rather aggressive young fellow who was insistent on smoking a joint on the train while punching windows randomly (seriously wtf?). Anyway it scared the crap out of both of us and I decided that if we would continue this routine, I would need to learn some self defense. So I signed up to a Karate class after work which filled the void nicely. So for the last 6 months or so I've been training Kyokushin Karate four days of the week, as well as going to the gym. You can imagine the change in fitness/body shape going from a regular gaming geek who does very little exercise to a full fledged killing machine...
Let's just say, I don't worry about the crazy people on our train line any more.
With all this going on, I started to lose touch with gaming and the blog-o-sphere in general. Oddly I didn't actually tell anyone about it either. Poor Melf was probably wondering where the hell I disappeared to. Cheers Melf for keeping the blog going btw.
Unfortunately there is a downside to doing anything excessively, and that's 'burnout' (yes it happens in the real world too!). All the exercise was becoming physically taxing and it lead to some minor injuries. Mostly neck and back problems. I knew there would need to be another change in my lifestyle or else I would hammer myself into a wall. So a middle ground was found. I now do karate two nights of the week and gaming on the other nights. My gf has also adjusted her night classes to fit this schedule. She's so awesome :)
So what game did I start playing again once I started getting back into gaming? Guild Wars. All this talk about GW2 has me excited about MMO gaming again. Plus I still think Guild Wars is the best MMO available at the moment. It was weird firing it back up after over a year of inactivity. A couple of weeks back into it, I organized a 3 day LAN with Melf, his gf and the brother of my gf. I started a Mesmer and relived the good times of starting a character from scratch. GW is so awesome, and it's great fun gaming with friends! You can expect some more posting on Guild Wars to come, but for now, lets just say:
It's good to be back!
Just after Christmas (now 6 months ago) my girlfriend and I moved in with her parents to save money for a our own house. This threw a bit of a spanner into the works of my daily gaming routine. My gf's parents house is located 1.5 hrs travel time away from both mine and my gf's work. Essentially my gf and I were getting up at 5:30am for work and getting home around 7:30pm. Once dinner was cooked I'd get about an hour and a half of gaming in before I needed to be asleep ready for the next day. Shortly after starting this routine, my gf decided that she wanted to start doing a TV writing course after work. The downside to this, is that we catch the train home. Her classes wouldn't finish until 9pm at night, which meant she would have to catch the late train home. Unfortunately our train line has some shady characters around and it gets even worse the later you catch it. So of course I had to wait around and catch the train with her to ensure her safety. This meant that I had a gap between 5:30pm and 9pm after work where I would do nothing. I couldn't play games because my gaming rig was 1.5 hrs away. What was I to do? On our second late train home of this routine, we encountered a rather aggressive young fellow who was insistent on smoking a joint on the train while punching windows randomly (seriously wtf?). Anyway it scared the crap out of both of us and I decided that if we would continue this routine, I would need to learn some self defense. So I signed up to a Karate class after work which filled the void nicely. So for the last 6 months or so I've been training Kyokushin Karate four days of the week, as well as going to the gym. You can imagine the change in fitness/body shape going from a regular gaming geek who does very little exercise to a full fledged killing machine...
Let's just say, I don't worry about the crazy people on our train line any more.
With all this going on, I started to lose touch with gaming and the blog-o-sphere in general. Oddly I didn't actually tell anyone about it either. Poor Melf was probably wondering where the hell I disappeared to. Cheers Melf for keeping the blog going btw.
Unfortunately there is a downside to doing anything excessively, and that's 'burnout' (yes it happens in the real world too!). All the exercise was becoming physically taxing and it lead to some minor injuries. Mostly neck and back problems. I knew there would need to be another change in my lifestyle or else I would hammer myself into a wall. So a middle ground was found. I now do karate two nights of the week and gaming on the other nights. My gf has also adjusted her night classes to fit this schedule. She's so awesome :)
So what game did I start playing again once I started getting back into gaming? Guild Wars. All this talk about GW2 has me excited about MMO gaming again. Plus I still think Guild Wars is the best MMO available at the moment. It was weird firing it back up after over a year of inactivity. A couple of weeks back into it, I organized a 3 day LAN with Melf, his gf and the brother of my gf. I started a Mesmer and relived the good times of starting a character from scratch. GW is so awesome, and it's great fun gaming with friends! You can expect some more posting on Guild Wars to come, but for now, lets just say:
It's good to be back!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
