Thursday, May 16, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
iLook at Star Command
I didn't back Star Command when it was on Kickstarter because I rarely back kickstarters, but I decided to give it a shot when it launched on the iPad a few weeks ago and see what kind of space game it was. This game has charm but a few issues that could easily be fixed. Okay, some issues are tougher to crack, especially the crew control, but I'll try to offer some insight on what is wrong with Star Command and what I would do with it.
The token system is fine for upgrades/recruiting, dumb for room abilities
For winning fights and completing missions, you get tokens. Red, blue and yellow tokens. You can use them to recruit people and to upgrade/build new rooms for your ship. This is pretty well explained and the upgrades are pretty straightforward. You also have rooms that need 'ammo' tokens to be used. Such as recharging your shields, firing big missiles and dodging incoming fire.
The problem is that these rooms wont produce ammo automatically (you need to manually start the process), wont collect ammo they made (you need to select the ammo) and will not tell you how much ammo you've got (you'll click the button and it will say 'YOU ARE AT MAX AMMO'). Why not have the ammo replenish automatically, be collected automatically and stop being made when you're at max capacity? Micro-managing is painful in Star Command and reducing it to the maximum would make a better experience.
This game lacks descriptions and help
There is a fair amount of flavor text in this game, but not much on the descriptive side. Rooms have no explanations at all, leaving you to wonder what their point is. You don't know what you get from staffing a room, more so with multiple people (which would be easy to fix by adding a description of what the room does, what it does if staffed and the effect of additional staff.) and even tho I've staffed all of my rooms, I don't know really why or what would happen if I hadn't.
It's the same thing for weapons, you get a minigame without any explanations, even the first time, and I'm still unsure of the timing of some of them. I really like the concept of minigames to fire at the enemy ship as it removes the need for randomness and allows it to be a little bit more skill based but sometimes I'm unsure of when I need to tap the screen and I can fail or win with a seemingly random chance.
Otherwise the game lacks automation
I think that more things should be automatic in Star Command, because the game is hard to control with all these tiny character sprites that you can miss easily and tap on the room and vice-versa. I would add a list of all your crew somewhere on screen, with their current station and a little number of options (such as their behavior if something breaks/aliens board your ship/someone is injured, depending of their shirt color) so they would staff their stations and then move automatically to fix/kill/heal when needed. It wouldn't take much space, enough for an icon representing the crew member and then a button to change the station they're staffing and another toggle to set if you want them to stay at their station or leave to do stuff in the ship.
Because right now it's a bit weird to try and have your characters move in range of the enemies, move your engineers to fires in the ship and move your medics if someone get hurt. If the controls were more precise, maybe that would be fine, but with how small everything is, I don't enjoy it one bit. Also, why can you wait for weapons to shoot when they're ready? Just pop the minigame when a gun can fire, it pauses the game already so there's no worry you're going to die while you're shooting and waiting to fire when a gun is ready has no use.
.PNG) |
| Space is full of predetermined battles. Every time you go somewhere, it's the same fight. |
For winning fights and completing missions, you get tokens. Red, blue and yellow tokens. You can use them to recruit people and to upgrade/build new rooms for your ship. This is pretty well explained and the upgrades are pretty straightforward. You also have rooms that need 'ammo' tokens to be used. Such as recharging your shields, firing big missiles and dodging incoming fire.
.PNG) |
| The flavor text is okay. |
.PNG) |
| The use of tokens instead of complex resources streamlines the game a bit. |
There is a fair amount of flavor text in this game, but not much on the descriptive side. Rooms have no explanations at all, leaving you to wonder what their point is. You don't know what you get from staffing a room, more so with multiple people (which would be easy to fix by adding a description of what the room does, what it does if staffed and the effect of additional staff.) and even tho I've staffed all of my rooms, I don't know really why or what would happen if I hadn't.
.PNG) |
| So, what is the engine for? I can delete it, so it mustn't be very important? |
.PNG) |
| You need to tap the big yellow circles when the small dot is in the red circle, I think |
I think that more things should be automatic in Star Command, because the game is hard to control with all these tiny character sprites that you can miss easily and tap on the room and vice-versa. I would add a list of all your crew somewhere on screen, with their current station and a little number of options (such as their behavior if something breaks/aliens board your ship/someone is injured, depending of their shirt color) so they would staff their stations and then move automatically to fix/kill/heal when needed. It wouldn't take much space, enough for an icon representing the crew member and then a button to change the station they're staffing and another toggle to set if you want them to stay at their station or leave to do stuff in the ship.
Because right now it's a bit weird to try and have your characters move in range of the enemies, move your engineers to fires in the ship and move your medics if someone get hurt. If the controls were more precise, maybe that would be fine, but with how small everything is, I don't enjoy it one bit. Also, why can you wait for weapons to shoot when they're ready? Just pop the minigame when a gun can fire, it pauses the game already so there's no worry you're going to die while you're shooting and waiting to fire when a gun is ready has no use.
.PNG) |
| These characters are so tiny, I can barely move them. |
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Look at Neverwinter
I really love Neverwinter, I've had the most fun with it than with any other MMO in the last four years. After my /played is over fifty hours, I really want to play it some more instead of writing this, that can't be a bad thing. The game isn't perfect of course, and some of the F2P systems are quite annoying me, but it's got neat mechanics and plenty of stuff to do, so I'm going to write this and then go play it some more. I'm also trying a new format for my ideas that I will be spreading here and there in bold instead of making separate paragraphs about them. Tell me what you think!
Unconvincing beginnings
I have to say that starting the game didn't warm me up to it instantly, I knew it was based on D&D fourth edition and that it was free to play, but that pretty much was it, so I created my character and chose a race. They all had passive effects and I really couldn't tell what was better than others so I ran with the one I found the silliest, ability-wise. Maybe they should've let the player chose a class before a race, so you know what stats you need?
Then I chose a class, and the classes are a little weird because you have Defender Fighter and Trickster Rogue and Controller Mage. Why not just Fighter, Rogue and Mage? I wanted to make a ranged damage dealer and according to the descriptions, none of the classes were like that, the mage was the closest thing (even if he was supposedly crowd control). All classes can wear certain type of gear and they also can 'open' certain type of chests (arcane, dungeoneering, lockpicking, religion, nature) without the use of consumable items. They all have different skills and talents and class features (The mage has one ability slot that empowers your skill placed in it).
Then it took a weird turn because it asked me to roll for stats. This is pretty crazy for multiple reasons. Either stats are very important in this game (and in that case, you need the highest stats possible to be on the same playing field as the other players and need to roll until you get everything) or they are not important at all (in that case, why roll for them? It doesn't matter anyways) and after a while, trying to get 18 in multiple stats, I realized that you can't, you don't even roll randomly, it goes through sets of stats. This system should be scrapped, give the player 10 in the three 'useless' stats, give him 18 in his mainstat and 14 in his two secondary stats, then he can use his racial stat bonus to increase one to 16. Just don't have fake dice rolls
Then I got into the game, shipwrecked somewhere, the game ready to tutorialize everything, from movement to combat, without forgetting picking up loot, dodging (each class can do a special defensive move by pressing SHIFT, in the mage's case, it's teleporting away) and the like. After doing all of this, you'll be in the main city, ready to start questing. At the beginning, I thought it was going to be a very classic MMO, and the tutorial helps differentiate how it's not entirely true, it should've started right in the middle of the action instead of having you walk around and right click on containers to loot them.
Mechanics!
You start off most of your adventures by talking to a military guy in the city and he will send you to one of the other maps of the game to talk to someone. You'll end up in a quest hub with two or three quests, work your way in the zone until you can do a 5-player dungeon or move on to the next map. All maps have a different theme, being undeads, lizards, bandits, wolves, barbarians, etc. In each map, you can gather tokens by killing enemies and then exchange these tokens for good items later on, it takes a bit of grinding to get anywhere good, so you also can spend a few tokens for a random equipment piece. Most of the quests involve killing things or getting items, so this is not the most original part of this game.
The basic battle mechanics are interesting, you have two at-will powers that you can use all the time, three or more encounter powers (that are misnamed because sometimes you'll get to use them more than once each encounter) and two daily powers (that you can use when a bar fills up). I know that they were named like that because of D&D but it's a little misleading to think that you're going to be able to cast that spell only once a day.
You hit enemies by targeting them and shooting your spells at them, there is no automatic lock-on like in other MMOs and you can move from one enemy to the next pretty quickly. I also like the dodging mechanics, metered by stamina that regenerates slowly. You can dodge most attacks if you get out of the way and bosses/strong enemies will show red areas on the ground where it's not safe to be. Bosses have large health bars and are often immune to stuns and deal tons of damage so you need to be quick with the dodges.
You also can drink potions to heal yourself and the cooldown is very short, so short that I haven't died yet. Maybe the cooldown should be longer, this game is a bit easy. Then again, death is pretty frustrating so nerfing the potions should come with less penalties when you die. Currently you need 'real money' items to resurrect if you die, or you can call for help if you're with other people. Otherwise you 'release' to the beginning of the dungeon while suffering one injury (giving you debuffs).
Speaking of 'real money' this game is bathing in free to play system. You get purple boxes that could contain awesome items such as mounts and companions and enchantments, but you need keys to open them, and the keys are 1.25$ each. I have about fifty of these boxes in my inventory, it's not too frustrating, but I really wish that you could find keys randomly sometimes. It might even incentivize people to buy more keys to see what you get in the other boxes.
I wanted to spend a few bucks in-game because I've really enjoyed it, more than some games that I've paid 60$ to. However, I think the prices are too high. You could spend 40$ on a single companion or mount, on a weapon or on additional storage, buying everything I would've wanted in this game would've cost me about 200$, and that's pretty crazy. I'm not sure how to fix this, on one hand, it's a valid business model, on the other, I'm sure there are people like me who would like to buy a few things in-game but don't want to spend that much.
You also can buy 'Zen' using in-game currency, the astral diamonds. These diamonds can be acquired by praying (once an hour at campfires scattered across the game) or by doing certain crafting missions you unlock after a while. It's an interesting idea, but the exchange rate is very low (understandable). After all that time I've played, I've converted all of my astral diamonds into Zen, and I have 25. Another hundred and I'll be able to get one key. That's fine, it's ran by players and the prices are set by supply and demand.
The crafting system is fantastic, I think. It's basically like farmville. You have nine spots to craft with, and they all start locked but one. You unlock them by leveling your professions, leveling your character and completing specific requirements. Then you can use your crafters (tailor, blacksmith, soldier, etc.) to craft different things, and it takes time to craft certain things. Gathering wool scraps takes 10 minutes, creating pants take 20 minutes, getting astral diamonds takes two hours. You level your professions like that and you craft things while questing or being offline (somethings like getting new crafters take up to 18 hours). The only things that I would improve with that system is that it's not good at telling you what you could craft but lack materials, also there should be a way out of the game to manage your crafting since the timers are so long and you could continue 'playing' while being out of the game.
Right now there are only one paragon paths per classes, which is kind of weird because you have to make a 'choice' at level 40, and there is no choice to make. Maybe they should've waited before releasing this feature. The feats are pretty standard except that you're not locked into one tree. They have pretty impactful effects on the way you fight and you can mix and match them to make a character you really like. I'm all for the life leech and regenerating faster so I can just continue fighting, myself.
The companion system isn't really great, tho. Your companions are only there to help you fight and when they gain enough experience, you send them away until they train and come back. They can equip runes and some gear, but you're never sure what's better for them, they should scrap that system entirely and have items specific to companions that increase some of their stats or skills. They also have maximum levels where it's confusing to me because some of their gear slots unlock at level 25 and they have a maximum level of 15. Should I get better companions now that they're maxed out? How? I've noticed that they die way more often now, how can I make them better if their levels are impossible to raise further? They should address some of that confusion.
I'm a bit annoyed by the runes because there are so many of them and they take so much space in your inventory. You fuse them in batches of 4 to upgrade them to the a higher tier and they have a chance to break (you can buy things with Zen to prevent them from breaking) and they act like gems (you can socket them in your gear) and equipment for your companions. The game was nice enough to provide you with an extra bag for crafting materials, it should've done the same with runes. Also I might be crazy, but these 95% to succeed rolls have failed more often than they should've, if it's not the real percentage, they should show it.
Conclusions
All and all, Neverwinter is a pretty good MMORPG, even if I never played with anyone else, there were no incentives to do random dungeons with people, I might try that later, but still. You still kill things and get loot, but the setting and systems in it are different enough to keep you interested. It's pretty hard to die with the amount of potions you can drink and the strength of your skills against your enemies, but that just makes seeing all of the content easier. The crafting and companions systems are interesting, the amount of customizing you can do to your character is enough to let you play the way you want, and if you really grind for it, you won't need to spend any real money to buy these Zen-locked items.
Unconvincing beginnings
I have to say that starting the game didn't warm me up to it instantly, I knew it was based on D&D fourth edition and that it was free to play, but that pretty much was it, so I created my character and chose a race. They all had passive effects and I really couldn't tell what was better than others so I ran with the one I found the silliest, ability-wise. Maybe they should've let the player chose a class before a race, so you know what stats you need?
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| I love gold find and critical hits! |
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| The sixth class is 'coming soon!' |
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| If it truly was random I would sit here and roll until I get all 18s |
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| I thought I knew everything about Neverwinter just by looking at this. |
You start off most of your adventures by talking to a military guy in the city and he will send you to one of the other maps of the game to talk to someone. You'll end up in a quest hub with two or three quests, work your way in the zone until you can do a 5-player dungeon or move on to the next map. All maps have a different theme, being undeads, lizards, bandits, wolves, barbarians, etc. In each map, you can gather tokens by killing enemies and then exchange these tokens for good items later on, it takes a bit of grinding to get anywhere good, so you also can spend a few tokens for a random equipment piece. Most of the quests involve killing things or getting items, so this is not the most original part of this game.
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| In this map, I was fighting orcs. |
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| Each power has three ranks and you'll get to level most of them by the end of your level 60 |
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| Ths boss wasn't immune to freezing so I cold beamed him to death. |
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| I died when someone rang the doorbell, I swear. |
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| Everyone is doing the free-chest-but-costly-key! |
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| 1000 ZEN = 10$. Heavy Worg indeed. |
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| It kinds of reminds me of eve online, a little. |
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| 'Protect Caravan' gives you astral diamonds and I just unlocked it, two hours is a bit much. |
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| First you take 20 points of regular feats, then it's up to paragon feats! |
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| Level 25 out of 15 is what you're saying? |
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| I've started throwing away my Rank 1 runes because I lack space. |
All and all, Neverwinter is a pretty good MMORPG, even if I never played with anyone else, there were no incentives to do random dungeons with people, I might try that later, but still. You still kill things and get loot, but the setting and systems in it are different enough to keep you interested. It's pretty hard to die with the amount of potions you can drink and the strength of your skills against your enemies, but that just makes seeing all of the content easier. The crafting and companions systems are interesting, the amount of customizing you can do to your character is enough to let you play the way you want, and if you really grind for it, you won't need to spend any real money to buy these Zen-locked items.
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| Gelatinous cube, I've missed you. (Also that star symbol next to the HP bar means that it's immune to crowd control) |
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
iLook at Random Heroes 2
This game does on-screen virtual buttons in a satisfactory manner, I haven't played many games like that but I found the controls good for an iPad platformer game. You jump with the B button and fire with the A button (and you can drag the A button up to fire upwards) while moving around to dodge enemies and projectiles, jump over pits and collect stars and skulls. There are tons of levels and tons of things to unlock.
The collectibles could been more integrated to the game
There is no point really to get the three stats each level (well, after two worlds I still don't know what it does) and the skulls are used for upgrades or for reviving you when you die (which is weird, because I wasn't able to access any kind of real money store, so you just run out of skulls after a while?) so they aren't much more then challenges to find everything. That being said, there is no quick way to restart levels, so if you fail to pick things up (by missing a jump so you can't go back up to pick a star or skull) you need to finish the level and then move to the next one and then go back to the main menu. A restart option somewhere would've been useful. No need for it to be on screen at all times, just letting you restart a level you just beat would've went a long way.
Neat characters
You start with a plain guy without any abilities but you can buy upgraded characters from a bandit that gets extra money when you kill enemies (but loses everything if you die) to a character with double jump, to character with other abilities (that you can activate with another button) such as hitting enemies with melee weapons and the like. The best characters attract coins and turn everything into gold. Most of them have nice effects but some are useless and they cost a lot. Money is a bit hard to get by in the game, later enemies drop the same amount of coins as the easier ones (and that's with the bandit character) and you can upgrade your life, movement speed and jump height two or three times with each characters.
The guns have a few issues but they're fun too!
Buying new guns instead of upgrading old ones can be a more costly and less effective way to spend your money in Random Heroes 2. Buying a machine gun and upgrading its stat to make it as good as another machinegun really makes the purchase of the second one useless. The upgrade system should've focused on unique ways the gun work to add them better abilities and not just increase their stats. If some gun as 1/3/1 (that's for damage, rate of fire and stability) and another one has 3/1/3, you can get one to 3/5/3 or 5/3/5 without having to buy the other one. Some of them have special effects such as damage-over-time flames or explosions, but most of them shoot bullets
Also, I really wished you could aim downwards in the addition of upwards because most enemies are just a level below you and you can't shoot them, I actually preferred weapons with low stability so I could hit enemies without being in the line of fire.
.PNG) |
| Not a fan of on-screen controls, but they work |
There is no point really to get the three stats each level (well, after two worlds I still don't know what it does) and the skulls are used for upgrades or for reviving you when you die (which is weird, because I wasn't able to access any kind of real money store, so you just run out of skulls after a while?) so they aren't much more then challenges to find everything. That being said, there is no quick way to restart levels, so if you fail to pick things up (by missing a jump so you can't go back up to pick a star or skull) you need to finish the level and then move to the next one and then go back to the main menu. A restart option somewhere would've been useful. No need for it to be on screen at all times, just letting you restart a level you just beat would've went a long way.
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| Here's Merio and Princess Peich |
You start with a plain guy without any abilities but you can buy upgraded characters from a bandit that gets extra money when you kill enemies (but loses everything if you die) to a character with double jump, to character with other abilities (that you can activate with another button) such as hitting enemies with melee weapons and the like. The best characters attract coins and turn everything into gold. Most of them have nice effects but some are useless and they cost a lot. Money is a bit hard to get by in the game, later enemies drop the same amount of coins as the easier ones (and that's with the bandit character) and you can upgrade your life, movement speed and jump height two or three times with each characters.
.PNG) |
| These three guns are a good example |
Buying new guns instead of upgrading old ones can be a more costly and less effective way to spend your money in Random Heroes 2. Buying a machine gun and upgrading its stat to make it as good as another machinegun really makes the purchase of the second one useless. The upgrade system should've focused on unique ways the gun work to add them better abilities and not just increase their stats. If some gun as 1/3/1 (that's for damage, rate of fire and stability) and another one has 3/1/3, you can get one to 3/5/3 or 5/3/5 without having to buy the other one. Some of them have special effects such as damage-over-time flames or explosions, but most of them shoot bullets
Also, I really wished you could aim downwards in the addition of upwards because most enemies are just a level below you and you can't shoot them, I actually preferred weapons with low stability so I could hit enemies without being in the line of fire.
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