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  • All That Work. That’s Just…Sad

    Posted on by suguay

    Storm Legion has landed and, within a few quests, all that work put into getting good gear almost feels a waste.

    I was nearly to the point of having a full set of purple gear. Now I’m back to a mix of greens and blues and one or two purples left, until I replace those of course. As I really should have and really did expect, Storm Legion greens are better than Chocolate Rift purples. *sigh*

    The first piece I got wasn’t so bad. I didn’t even use it because it wasn’t as good as a piece I had just made. Whew. But most of the rest of the stuff I got as quest rewards really was better. In some cases we’re talking not a little better but A LOT better.

    I was ok with it until I got the staff. All the work to get the Inscribed Source stone to get the staff, and in just a few hours of play I have an even better one. And I got the new wand right after I got the staff. It makes me a little sad.

    Ok so enough lamenting. Truth is, if I hadn’t put all that effort into getting that gear, I’d be struggling. Storm Leagion level 50 mobs in the new zones are at least as hard as the 52’s in Ember Isle, so as sad as I am to be replacing gear I worked hard for so soon, I’m glad I made that effort to get that gear. And I’m glad to be getting even better gear now.


    Games Land

  • Powerful, At Least for a Little While

    Posted on by suguay

    By the time I get this posted we will be mere hours away from the launch of Storm Legion, the first expansion to Rift. I’m excited about it. I’ve actually been spending some time working to get my Mage geared up and leveled up and I am finally starting to feel powerful. At least for a few hours anyway. I am enjoying it too.

    I was able to get enough Inscribed Source Stone to get my second level Planar Staff. That has really helped. Of course all that Planar Attunement that comes alone with it from all the leveling doesn’t hurt either.

    I’ve been fairly good about doing my crafting dailies and weeklies and had a fair bit of Master Craftsman Marks that I decided to spend. Well, I didn’t spend all of them, just most of them. I got recipes for about four pieces that I can wear and they will help with my stats. Of the four recipes, two I could make right away and two are going to take a few days since some of the materials they require are those master ones that you can only make one of every twenty hours. I’m hoping for that to go away in the expansion, and I thought I looked in beta, but I can’t remember. So I’ll just proceed as if it’s still there. My luck the Grand Master material will be a forty hour cool down.

    Crafting aside. I’ve also done some Chronicles. I need the marks to get some of the gear I want, I’ve even looted an item in one that was better than what I had, though not as good as what I’m going to make. Anyway. I ran the two person chronicles on my Mage alone. I have an elemental pet that I let tank for me. I was really pleased to find I could solo those once I got the new staff and two other new pieces.

    I’ve even taken on some level 50 rifts solo and succeeded. Well, not with the major one but that’s a whole other story.

    I am really enjoying feeling like my character has some power. She may not be as powerful as she could be but she’s getting there. At least for now. Soon she’ll be clawing her way back up the ladder with everyone else.

    There is another factor other than gear. That is that I feel like I fianlly get it. I get how to get more powerful. I get how to get to the top levels, or at least close. I know it’s within my capabilities. Seems a little strange to me after nearly a year of playing Rift and a few years of World of Warcraft, among other games. You would think that whole thing had sunk in before now. Only, I guess it hadn’t.

    So for now my Mage feels powerful, soon, maybe not so much. At least she won’t be so weak as to make her feel like I’m starting over when the expansion hits. And, I am looking forward to Storm Legion with a different frame of mind. Become fearce and powerful. It’ll be fun!

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    Games Land

  • Respec? Ok.

    Posted on by suguay

    Originally I was going to write yet another article complaining about respecs. When the patchg for Rift dropped, in preparation for Storm Legion we all got the joy of respecing our toons. For some, maybe not so joyous.

    I am going to take just a moment to whine about the process. It took over two hours just to respec my four toons with a total of five roles. Choosing new roles was bad enough, setting up my action bars was almost a nightmare. For those of you with six toons and multiple roles per, or more, really you have my sympathies. My other whine is that I was just getting used to the new role I chose for my Warrior and I was really comfortable with how I was playing my Cleric. And I really had things down on my Mage. Don’t get me wrong, none of them were perfect, well my Cleric felt close to it. But I was comfortable with them.

    Maybe that’s the point. We get comfortable with our play style and abilities and get complacent.

    In defense of the respec, I have seen some improvement and advantage. Though not all of it is attributable to new roles. For my Mage and my Warrior, it comes down to the change in how Planar Attunement is handled. Finally I feel like I’m doing the damage I should be. Or at least closer. I’m still trying to gear up.

    I did notice that my Cleric seems to be a bit mroe powerful, even though she lost a lot of her healing abilities with the change. Still, she survives pretty good and if I’d go ahead and run her up to cap she might be my best bet at surviving Storm Legion.

    Though I whine a bit about the respec process, it seems to be working out to an imporvement for me so I’ll just keep my head down and keep wailing on things in preparation for the expansion and hope I don’t have to spend too much time grinding old content to get gear to survive the new stuff.


    Games Land

  • When The Game Becomes Work

    Posted on by suguay

    I have this collegue, who like me, likes to play computer games, mostly the online variety. This collegue however has never had a top tier character nor has he ever reached any end game content. He blames it on “alt-itis”, you know that affiction where you start one character get it to leverl 20 or 30 and start another.

    We’ve discussed some of why this happens. Sometimes it’s lack of satisfaction with the character. It just doesn’t feel right. Sometimes it turns out to be not as much fun to play.

    Right now I have two level capped characters in Rift. One I pretty much abandoned shortly after I got there. The other I’ve been fairly dillegent in playing and have even done a few dugeons with. What I have noticed is that now she’s as high as she can go until the expansion hits and playing her mostly feels like work.

    Really, at the top end playing that character feels more like a job whe I go to play her. I have crafting dailes to do. I have to go farm the high end materials to do the Master Crafting dailies. And on top of that, because I didn’t do dungeons as I went along leveling, now I need to go back and do dungeons to get mark to get good gear to get to the next level of dungeons.

    We’re going to skip some of the reasons I didn’t do dungeons all along and stick with one of the main reasons I still don’t do dungeons. My character role is DPS. DPS tend to be a dime a dozen, though I think the going rate these days for a dozen DPS might be closer to about 2 pennies. You usually need 2 to 3 DPS for a basic 5 person dungeon. Since everyone is DPS, there aren’t enough people queues for the other roles so a DPS person might be waiting 45 to 90 minutes for a dungeon when playing solo such as I. I do not have the interest or the patience to wait that long just to run through a dungeon as fast as someone can and not get to experience the place. Or get the loot or materials that might be lurking there.

    Once you get to the level cap, where the endgame content begins, this is where I think the game becomes work. Lest you think I am picking on Rift, I will share that I felt the same with my character in World of Warcraft.

    Perhaps it is the way I choose to play these games. Maybe it is the wat the game is designed. I think it has more to do with the evolution of the culture within the game as it is played. I suspect it is a little of all of it.

    I do know, that for me, it is the leveling process that is fun. Getting to see new areas and challenges. Getting new skills to try out and getting new gear. Those are the fun bits. Just working to get the gear to do a dungeon or raid? That’s too much like a job.

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    Games Land

  • Revisiting Entropia with a Different Point of View

    Posted on by suguay

    I recently revisited Entropia Universe and more specifically Planet Calypso. What I found interesting was that it really holds true that the more things change the more they stay the same.

    If what I have seen and the release notes are any indication, then the developers are putting a lot of time in creating and improving content. If you were in Entropia a couple of years ago and are just going back, in many ways it’s a different world.

    So far, I’ve seen air vehicles, new loot, new beasties, and missions. And with the exception of a couple of the really early missions, I haven’t found much reward in doing the missions. This is a little frustrating. In addition, at least on of what I would consider an early, mission has you up against some beasts that as a new player, with an entry level weapon and no armor, are nearly impossible to kill. You spend a lot of time dying. Something I get tired of doing.

    If, by the time you get to this point you still have a weapon and some bulles then you’re in luck and you might get to take one down. Remember though, one shot take a lot of bullets. If you haven’t got PED to buy more bullets this is going to be really frustrating.

    This is where we get to the part where the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even with all the added content and game play, this game still requires cas to play it. Yes, it’s “free” to play in that there is no monthly subscription fee. And it’s possible that if you put a lot of time in doing things that farner low value rewards then you can build up enough cast to step up a level. However, if you do’t have the patience for that, then the onlyway to get to greater rewards is to deposit cold, hard, real world cash in exchange for PED so you can purchase better gear, or more ammunition or both. 

    This really isn’t anything new for Entropia Universe. However the drastically increased number of bullets required per shot for low level weapons makes the need for cash even greater and more pronounced.

    Previously, I’ve look at all this more from a game play aspect with a little bit of a filter on the economics. There are a couple of additional ways to look at this. As a concept, in gener, I’ve probably looked at this in a previous article. Here I want to address it as something a little revolutionary, a job. I also want to point out it’s devisiveness and thus it’s similarities to social network games.

    First, the concept of playing Entropia Univers as a job. One of the concepts of Entropia Univers is the idea that the in world currency has a stable exchange rate to a real wold currency, in this case the US Dollar. So in theory andy game money you earn can be turned into real world cash for things like paying your rent. Entropiais not the only online world to do this. Second Life offered a similar opportunity though the exchange rate of the Lindoen to the US Dolar is variable. With Entropia, Mind Ark put in place, constraings that make getting money out of the game non-trivial. This keeps everyone who’s made a little money from removing it too frequently. So to make it worth while to get money out, you really need to have a lot of money in the game. In addition to that, it’s only really worth it if you have put little, or better yet, no money into it. To get a lot of money without putting any money in is going to take a lot of hours doing a lot of low paying in game work until you can build up enough in game capital to increase your earning capacity. To do this and expect to one day be able to regularly take money out of the game, playing Entropia must be treated as a job. If you are at the point where you are regularyl exchanging PED for USD to pay your real world expenses then Entropia Univers and whatever you do in it has become your job.

    Stop and think about this a moment. This really is mind blowing. This isn’t earning a living playing games competitively. This is earning a living directly from your activities in a virtual world. 

    On that note, I think I’ll look at the siilarities to social network games in another article.


    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    Games Land