I’m a vampire man.
Tag: Crafting
Reality MagiQ Talks: Dysterra Q&A
Jagex Making Open World Survival Game
Population Zero Launches On Steam Early Access
Population Zero is officially on Steam early access.
Continue reading “Population Zero Launches On Steam Early Access”
Albion Answers: Cool Drops When Everything Is Player Crafted
Sandbox MMOs have always had a rough time answering what sounds like a simple question: How do you balance drops in a game that is supposed to be driven by player crafting? For Albion Online, the answer is simple, you just make the drops player-crafted.
The Black Market doesn’t work like a normal NPC merchant, instead he will buy player crafted items based on supply and demand, for which a buy order can be generated by a player killing a mob, and when a certain number of buy orders are generated, the price will rise. Players can go to the black market and fulfill those buy orders directly or set up sell orders so that the item will automatically sell once their price is met.
In short, imagine it like this: The loot tables operate like normal, but there is finite stock based on what players are selling. So if Player B kills a goblin and his loot table pings an iron sword, the game will check to see if there is an iron sword available and if there is, drop it for Player B while Player A gets paid.
The system, in theory, allows Albion to increase drops and have mobs drop cooler stuff because it is all coming from other players. In addition, it creates an item/gold sink as some items are naturally lost in such a shady, back door environment.
You can check out the short video below.
Marvel Heroes: Stock Up On Cheap Crafting Tabs
The Marvel Heroes Mystic Mayhem event has arrived, ushering in the new Infernal Limbo zone not to mention tons of possibilities for loot. Head into Limbo and get your hands on eternity splinters, legendary scrolls, hero tokens, and more. Check out the detailed forum post for more information on exactly what the event entails.
Those of you who don’t mind throwing a little dosh into the game should be aware of an upcoming update dubbed Stash 2.0. As part of the update, crafting tabs will be going away as part of a series of updates that will streamline crafting and make the tabs less useful over time. As a result, Gazillion is getting in on the action early and will be converting crafting tabs to general tabs as part of an upcoming update.
What does this mean for you? If you were looking at buying stash tabs, now is the perfect time to do so. Crafting tabs cost 300g compared to 500g for general tabs, saving nearly 50%. Buy all six for 1800g and save approximately $12.
(Source: Marvel Heroes)
MMOrning Shots: Village of Heroes
Today’s MMOrning Shot comes to us from Mad Otter Games, whose free to play title Villagers & Heroes is now available on Steam. Players are encouraged to cooperate in this MMO with player-created towns and sandbox-style crafting. How do the towns work, you ask?
The towns of Villagers and Heroes are not merely set-pieces. They are dynamic and ever-changing. Through the teamwork and contributions of players, crafting stations will rise, homes and fields will flourish, and new quests will be revealed.
Check out MMOrning Shots every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and new screenshots will be revealed.
Guild Wars Hands On Part 3: More Crafting!
In the second part of the hands on, I may have said that GW2’s crafting system was rather familiar. Well, you can string me up and beat the candy out because I missed one key part of crafting: Discovery. But first, I want to talk about why Guild Wars 2’s crafting system is superior to your own.
I Can Craft Whatever I Like
First, crafting is incredibly convenient. While other games allow you the power to craft virtually anywhere you please, Guild Wars 2 does force you to use stations scattered over the main towns and villages. That said, I submit that the ability to remotely deposit your crafting resources, one that is available without the need for a cash shop item (which admittedly would sell like penicillin in the gonorrhea dimension), easily negates the inconvenience of crafting stations.
And inconvenience is a harsh word at that. When you can salvage your items on the field, and then transfer those items directly to your collections box (without taking up precious bank space), and then at your convenience teleport directly to a town and walk the twenty feet to a crafting station, withdraw your crafting items right there at the station and then immediately sell/deposit the goods you’ve made either to an NPC or on the open market, there is no inconvenience. Or about as inconvenient as having to pull that plastic tab out of your Furby before it will begin learning your voice (yes I’m making 90’s references).
2. Discovering New Recipes
This is the feature I wanted to talk about most, and one that I just dived into yesterday after I stupidly punched out my second part preview. Every skill has recipes that are gained as you level up, but each skill also has a set of recipes that can only be learned by “experimenting” with crafting materials and even some finished products. Any item you produce that carries another skill(level) tag is an ingredient for another recipe.
So let’s take a look at some examples. I’m a chef, which means I can bring food into this discussion as much as I like and none of you can complain that it is random. The most basic recipe offered to chefs is a loaf of bread. The bread, however, experimented with can be combined with butter to make buttered toast. Or you can combine bread with red meat and make a hamburger. Or combine yeast, flour, oil, and milk to make biscuits (don’t quote me on this recipe).
I suppose where this falls short is that the whole system is rather casual. When you add your first ingredient, the game tells you outright what could be combined and what cannot. For instance, adding bread to the pool will result in “9 unknown recipes left,” even with a notice as to what cooking level you would need to craft the recipe and have it added to your recipe list. The hand-holding side of this is that the game will just block you from crafting anything that isn’t compatible, or above your level. So you don’t have to worry about wasting ingredients while crafting or looking it up online, you can’t waste ingredients or have experimentation fail, the game won’t allow it.
I’m sure players will decry it as care-bear or hand holding on this feature (oh wait, I already did), but it is an interesting feature that adds an extra level of depth and exploration to crafting. It also gives an incentive to gather as many raw materials as possible, rather than picking one or two recipes still capable of offering crafting experience and leveling those.
Other than that I have no opinion
Guild Wars 2 Impressions Part 2: Crafting, WvWvW
First off, I would like to apologize to the servers currently fighting Blackgate. Sorry we are completely dominating the board, that is. I kid, but seriously my server is whooping some major ass in the world vs world scene. Anyway, in the previous hands on I had a chance at discussing the questing of Guild Wars 2 and the overflow servers. For today’s hands on I looked at the World Vs World Vs World and crafting.
1. Crafting Myself A Better Headline
Guild Wars 2 allows you to take on two crafts at a time, but with a catch: Apparently you can swap them at any time and still retain the levels (don’t quote me on this). Additionally, it doesn’t matter what your professions are, you are able to collect resources from any skill as long as you have the requisite tool. Each tool has a certain number of uses before it breaks and needs to be replaced, and each tool has certain tiers that must be purchased in order to gather higher level items.
Crafting should be familiar to anyone who has played an MMO. You find materials by salvaging items (which, like Guild Wars, is done with a kit and is not its own profession), gathering resource nodes, and gutting mobs for their delicious flesh and skins. Unlike its fellow games, however, Guild Wars 2 has a fancy ability to deposit your crafting goods remotely. So if you are running around and suddenly find yourself filled up with ingots, fibers, pelts, and more, you can hit a simple button and deposit them in your collections bank. Later on when you are at a crafting station, you can just as easily withdraw said items.
Naturally some of the materials you won’t be able to get at all from the wild, forcing your hand to purchase from the many in-game NPCs. Certain resources also can only be purchased with karma points, which are obtained by completing live events. Additionally, crafting is quite a bit more involved than your average MMO. Most crafting skills have raw materials that are crafted into components, but also require another step before they can be turned into armor/weapons. For instance, in order to make a leather vest, one must first create a couple of vest parts which are then crafted into the vest.
The monetary restrictions of crafting prevent you from out-leveling your character in skills.
2. World Vs World Vs World: My Word
There is a word for Guild Wars 2’s world vs world vs world mode, but I’m too busy beating down the hordes of the other servers to think about it. World Vs World allows players to represent their server against select opponents in rounds that last two weeks. At the end of the two week period, the scores are tallied and the servers with the best scores win. This takes place on four massive maps where players fight for control over various territories. The zones act as any normal Guild Wars 2 area, so there are also mobs (both passive and aggressive) and resource nodes to be mined for goods, as well as merchants, trainers, and profession zones.
The number of options to help your team in World Vs World is truly astounding. You can fortify keeps, protect caravans, attack enemy keeps, defend your own keeps, operate siege weaponry, and rebuild after a devastating defense. Handy markers on the map let you know where battle is taking place, and keep assaults quickly turn into massive sieges with well over a hundred players present. The experience of being in one of these sieges, both as attacker and defender, is quite difficult to express without experiencing it for yourself. The guilds already in place are doing their best to make the experience as epic as possible.
It is also possible to gain drops off of your enemies. You aren’t stealing any of their loot, but the game treats it as a mob kill and will spawn loot bags with random materials, weapons, equipment, etc. You won’t gain much experience or loot from PvP in this fashion, but it does provide an incentive for players who might otherwise not bother.
3. Daily/Monthly Achievements
I can only assume my monthly achievements will be reset at the end of August, a pity considering the game only launched the 25th. Guild Wars 2 offers daily and monthly achievements, with rewards for completing sets of achievements as well as the whole list. Daily achievements are rather easy, from number of kills, variety of kills, gathering, etc. Monthly quests are a bit more involved, including salvaging items in mass, experience without death, number of invaders killed, and completing events.
The rewards for completing these events is well worth the effort required, however.
4. Next Time…
Next time I hope to talk to you all a bit more about the auction house. As I said yesterday, it is still offline.
MMO Fallout 