Dredge and LOTR: Return to Moria

Games about inventory management!

Dredge

This was a surprise for me: a fishing game that managed to hold my attention for over two weeks! But its not really just fishing is it? Each critter has a slightly different reeling in mini-game which goes a long way to keeping it interesting and some only come out at night and in certain parts of the map. Then you also need to upgrade your boat which gives you more space not only for fish, but to also get different rod types so that you can fish deeper or in more tangled environments.

The best part is the game isn't really about fishing at all. Bad stuff lurks in the dark depths, and making sure they don't get you while intentionally going into their territory is quite the blast. Awesome game - recommended!

Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

The dwarves have decided to reclaim their greatest territory long fallen to evil forces and when trying to get in (because speaking "friend" to enter isn't working anymore) you (and possibly your co-op allies) are the only one(s) to make it in with basically nothing.

That's ok because this is a crafting survival game and there's loads of material just lying around for you to make everything you need like axes, pickaxes, weapons, armor, food, and your very own base. Good luck trying to carry all of it at once though! Excellent idea with some items being overpowered (insta wooden platforms to avoid enemies? Yes please!) and other things just being stupid like cooking forces you to wait 30 seconds while making a pick axe is instantaneous. Huh? As a player you really feel that idle time.

Alas that type of game loop is boring for me but if you enjoy things where you need to build up to advance a bit then harvest and build up again then this is a game for you! Literal walls of "you need the next level of pick axe" determine how far you can scavenge so enjoy the long dark of Moria!

Pine (PC Game) vs Valheim

All about heroic labor for explorer-crafters.

Pine

With their cliffs having become too unstable, it is up to you - a human from a small tribe, to find a new home on this island which you soon learn is shared by five other races who are also running around gathering, trading and warring with each other.  You too can be friends with them, but not all at the same time since helping one usually angers a few others.

Elephants never forget!

This Unity built game has a decent story, quite pretty to look at, and is fun to play due to the interactivity with the other races. There are also some hard puzzles to be found here, and while melee combat isn't so great (it's probably the weakest part of the game) there's plenty enough to do without it. Definitely for explorer crafters (in that order, more about exploring than crafting) I give it four sparkler traps out of five.

Insight: Do the two pouch quests ASAP.

Valheim

With his enemies gaining strength Odin sends the best warriors he can find to defeat them on their world and to make it entertaining he ensures they only arrive in rags and are suffering from severe amnesia. "Welcome to Valheim idiot!" is not really an exaggeration as even basic tasks like running and jumping need to be leveled up upon arrival.

This survival game takes place on a randomly generated world where you (and up to nine co-op buddies) must craft, hunt, and ultimately slay the five big bads wandering the world. While the graphics aren't the sharpest they are quite serviceable especially when you take into account that you can cut down every large tree you see and turn mountains into deep pits if you so desire.

 

Pants get in the way of fighting!

I beat the first boss solo with minimal grind, but even that was already pushing the limits of my patience. Would I recommend this to my Friday night co-op group to potentially spend the entire evening doing mundane stuff like chopping trees, mining minerals and hunting game? Definitely not, especially since it is lacking in the story and variety department. If your crew enjoys those activities then you should try it out. If your team is more action orientated or you don't have a team, I think you should just stay away from this one.

Insight: The bow is very strong. Go for that as your first goal once you've got a workbench.

Crashlands

Cute, crazy and absolutely grindy.

Crash landing on an alien planet has never been so much fun. When you and your AI companion emerge in the cartoonish, bouncy world you can immediately set about harvesting the local flora and fauna to build your way to thrive. Crafting is definitely the focus of this game, and that is reinforced by having quests that reward either component schematics or component pieces. There's no EXP. It's basically, if you want to do this you need to build this. Weapons add damage. Armor adds HP. It's pretty straight forward.

Majestic indeed.

The interface is pretty cool too, letting you track how much of what you still need to build X item and there is a good critter variety that you'll need to learn to fight and harvest across the massive planet. It's actually pretty strange having everything bright and colorful with a cheery banter while you butcher alien cows in explosions of blood to collect their bones, flesh and various organs. Alas, it's not one for me as the main draw it one of my pet peeves: grinding. Lots and lots of material grinding to be precise. For those that like that sort of game play with a ridiculously heavy slant towards harvesting and crafting, definitely try this out. For everyone else, stay away.

Insight: Pick up everything! Also you can instantly warp to your crashpad and other telepads you discover by clicking on them on your map.

Watch Dogs: Beginner Tips

I thought I'd just put up six quick tips to help people survive ctOS Chicago in Watch Dogs.

1 - "Open your World"
Lots of your cooler and more useful skills will be locked until you complete the act one mission with this name, so unlike the Assassin's Creed series where you probably should do all the side stuff as soon as it becomes available, just power through the main story until you get to it (it's near the start) before doing any of the side missions.

2 - Silence is Golden
You can almost clear out an entire gang base if you use your silenced equipment (which mostly means the starter pistol at the beginning) and aim for the head, which always nets a kill unless you are shooting someone with a helmet. Civilians also have less chance to call the cops since they don't hear gunfire (unless you keep missing). Use focus once you've unlocked it to help steady your aim.

3 - The Destroyer of Criminal Convoys
Once you do enough criminal convoys (10 I think) you get to unlock this rifle (called "The Destroyer"). Choose those first 10 missions wisely as some are much harder than others but once this gun is in your hands none should pose a problem. One hit from a rifle disables a vehicle and since NPCs NEVER get into a car that they didn't start with it makes all the chase x person tasks much easier as you can force your prey to be on foot. A head shot from this will also kill the heavily armored guys, just aim for the goggle section. Once again, focus is your friend.

4 - Bad boys go to the beach, and sleep in their cars
The Chicago police are ridiculously aggressive, willing to kill bystanders to get to you. While unlocking your magical phone abilities to use the city infrastructure against them is certainly a good way to slow them down, an easier method is to head for the nearest marina and catch a boat since they are incredibly allergic to water and will not chase you there. The helicopters will, but your magic phone can disable them. And if they have snipers well, bullets (especially from the Destroyer) can help with that. If there are no boats nearby a good alternative is to use a blackout doohickey (or cause one the old fashioned way) then hide in your car, especially if you have the related bonus skill. I've managed to hide in the middle of a freeway, with a police cruiser right beside me. It looked at my smoking wreck of a vehicle for a bit then drove off. :P

5 - "Steal a Vehicle" contracts need Skill
The "steal a vehicle" fixer contracts were the hardest ones in the game for me, since you can't really get out of the car for longer than 20 seconds. You'll definitely want as many/all of your skills unlocked before attempting them, along with pockets full of consumable items. Being familiar with how various vehicles handle and the various short cuts and back road ramps as a player is also handy.

6 - Be Crafty
Crafting stuff is great, but since its a pain to go buy equipment or collect them it might help to know what stuff is used most (or at least, what stuff I used most). The number one item is: Jam Communications, followed by Blackout, followed by Focus pills. Frags and IEDs had some rare moments, mostly during campaign missions but I didn't really use any of the others so unless your play style widely varies from mine, save your resources! I found lures to be especially useless, but perhaps have some value to those who want a "no kill" play through (yeah, good luck with that).

That's it, hopefully it's of use to someone out there! :)

Warhammer: Vermintide

Hexen mixed with Left 4 Dead.

The end of the world comes at the hands of ... the Skaven? Hmm. I guess if they carry the bubonic plague or something. Anyway, in this first person Warhammer game you can pick out of five playable characters: a soldier, elf, dwarf, mage and witch hunter; though only four will be present on any one mission (three played by bots if need be). The banter between them is pretty cool, letting the player learn about them as they too learn about each other. I believe this changes per mission, per difficulty level of which there are five.

Gameplay wise, it is very much L4D with swarms of enemies who have a few special units that show up from time to time - one that pounces, one that strangles, a really beefy one and so on. While thematically you might be sounding the alarm or finding food it also follows the same get from point A to point B on a big map that the zombie game uses. Still, that doesn't make it any less fun.

Just a few of the tools to kill the vermin with...

While ammo is pretty limited, all the characters are pretty competent in melee wherein you can use light or heavy attacks, parry and push which gains aggro. Obviously the weapons you decide to bring will dictate how you play too. Guns make more noise than bows and a rapier cuts faster but lighter than a two handed sword for example.

There is also a crafting component available at the inn hub, wherein you sacrifice five items to gain one better, similar item while crossing your fingers that the RNG gods give you something nice.  All up I quite like the game, give it three and a half emperors out of five,and recommend it to people who would be interested in a semi-dark ages L4D type game with no zombies. :P

MMOs: Focus content for Groups or Individuals?

The lowest common denominator when it comes to MMORPG players is one. That occurence, the lone wandering gamer, has a 100% chance of appearing in any MMO. Sure, he may be an individual in a group or perhaps a whole bunch of groups but the one thing he can often be is on his own. It is for that reason that when designing my Neverwinter Online Foundry Quests I am balancing the encounters against what one person can handle, despite being able to bring up to four other people (plus their companion pets). Sure it will be easier in a group, but - isn't that the point? Strength in numbers.

I much prefer it that way than design content for five people which might then exclude the solo gamer. It seems the growing trend is to design for the maximum number though, with some instances (looking at you GW2) requiring multiple people through specific mechanics, like standing on pressure plates or pressing buttons simultaneously. That's pretty cool in a group, but there should always be a bypass for solo runners otherwise I just feel it is bad design. Heck, Warframe (which is a SHOOTER) does it - there's no excuse for an MMORPG not to. Personally I also feel that it's less of an accomplishment if I needed 79 people to help me bring down a dragon. That's just me.

I think part of the problem is the "shared" loot system some games have. In GW2, 80 of you kill a mighty dragon. Each of you gets 2 boxes (just an example). If you somehow managed to kill the thing alone you would still get the same 2 boxes, hardly worth the added risk and effort. My way of thinking, if you managed such an impressive feat alone you should get 180 boxes. The less of you there are, the harder the task but the more rewarding - and vice versa. Unfortunately due to the design, there will rarely be that much less of you since it's almost like you NEED a huge zerg to succeed. Huge zergs do form, but 100% of the time? Unlikely. That leads to simply ignoring the content if there aren't enough people around.

If you focus content for individuals, will it make people less likely to group? Yes and no. The people who like to group will still group up. Those that don't, won't. This is still a better design than anything with forced grouping which often leads to more unwilling participants and elitist bullying - "Change your armor! Change your skills!". No thank you, I'd like to play the game how I WANT TO PLAY IT, with MY OWN character, thanks. The elitists will still have a place with the individual focused content though, they'll be the ones saying - "hah, I did that solo". The ones that like min/maxing will be saying - "hah, my group did that in 5 minutes". The best part is, you won't ever have to group with any of them if you don't want to. Choice is a powerful and wonderful thing.

MMOs: The Craftiest Ideals

[Part of my MMO Design Folder]

 J3w3l at Healing the Masses recently posted her views (with a Firefall focus)  about the generally underuse of crafting in modern MMO's and I whole heartedly agree. If properly implemented, crafting can become a good tool to increase player interaction in game. These days though it has been made a bit too optional, with equivalent level/quality items coming from loot drops and in conjunction with either a regular/high level chance to get an item and/or permanent gear it really makes crafters and crafting in general a truly non-essential part in game. As she said "this usually leads to item tiers and gear treadmills". It shouldn't be this way, and I did post my ideal crafting setup somewhere on Keen and Graev's blog awhile back but was unable to find it so I thought I'd just recreate it here.

Firstly in conjunction with my previous post, crafting should have its own skill score per craft. If I am good at making swords I shouldn't automatically be a master fisherman, grand mage, or champion sword fighter. That's just common sense. Not so in GW2 where you literally CAN be a master swordsman by baking cakes. On top of that, I think Ultima Online had it right by putting a skill cap per character - something that should seriously be reintroduced. There were no "classes" per say. You could be anything you wanted, but you couldn't be the master of everything at once. If you could then that aspect of interaction with others to supplement you in areas you are lacking is lost and negates to the player community the game should be trying to encourage.

Secondly ALL items (especially consumables) should have expiration. "Don't I mean durability?" you ask. Yes and no. In most games durability goes down when you use an item. Keep that shiny sword in your bank or at home and it can last forever / a long time. Expiration is a timer. The quality of your gear should be going down -always-, even if you are just standing still, and in some cases even if you are logged off. Health potions? Food with buffs? They should expire. Consuming expired goods should poison / kill you. Simple. As for your sword if it is a regular item then maybe it won't decay while you are logged out. However the more you use it the faster the expiration timer goes down. Also, an important note: the player should NEVER be able to see the exact time of expiration. They should just be able to tell if it's "good", "average", or "bad" in a general sense (maybe background color, if they pass a skill check) with no specifics. A magic sword however? Yes. That should decay even if you are not online... because... magic! :P

Actually the main reason for the decaying magic sword would be for uniqueness. As an example lets say there's an item called the "sword of fighting". Once it is found then it or the mob/chest it drops from will not respawn until it decays. If there is only ever one sword of fighting in the world at a time, then you can expect it to have some pretty sweet stats. This will really encourage you to make the most of it before it vanishes. Sure you can try "repair" it, but that should only add a % of time back instead of resetting the entire expiration. "But No MMO would use the expiration thing!" you exclaim. See Mabinogi. It's still called durability there but for me the decay is -still- too slow.

I'm sure Perf agrees that the sword should expire.

Thirdly, availability - or lack of. Notice how I went right past quality? Sure, it's nice if a dagger made by a master crafter is slightly better than the same dagger made by a one day old character, but availability is where the action really happens. In GW2 there is a bucket load of vendors with the lowest tier gear. I'm surprised they get ANY business at all because by level 5 (which takes all of 10 minutes to get to) you'll be getting drops of the next tier items. Now if those items didn't drop, or dropped at a much reduced rate coupled with the expiration timer above they'd be getting a lot more trade, which is slightly better but those are still NPCs. A better option is to ditch them entirely for player run shops or have them only sell the stuff they purchased from players. Game designers concerned at the possible data ramifications of a gazillion things held by a single vendor should remember that said items expire and should no longer be sold (delete them) once the timer runs out.

As one would expect this would lead to a surplus of stuff in friendlier places and a shortage in harder to reach unfriendly lands. Keeping in mind that your stuff WILL break that should either mean being batman level prepared before you start or expecting to pay more to buy less in the further reaches of the map. In the same vein, traders that sell their goods in those far places (or anywhere there is a "shortage" really) should get additional benefits (most likely gold). You can still use auction houses and cash shop methods with this, as long as the acquisition of said goods is restricted to set locations. Friendly cities for example. If I'm wading through the labyrinth of undead zombie spiders I shouldn't be able to get a pizza delivered to me by NPCs... much less a brand new weapon or full set of gear. Interestingly this would open the door for a "player courier" system, would be cool if a player DID have to deliver said pizza to me. Must give that more thought as there is too much room for griefing. :P

What do you think?