Risk #2, Transparency

Even more comments along from my last post and last time at mmocrunch.
I'll quote Inktom,

Unfortunately Hulkageddon 1 and 2 has made safe mining impossible even in empire space. Since Apocrypha and the introduction of wormhole space, you can get that 0.0 feel and profitablility without venturing past gatecamps getting to null or lowsec. They even have wormholes that lead to 0.0 and that enables the term: Stealth mining. But that requires a few hulks and an orca. HUGE RISK! But tremendous reward if you pull it off.

But EVE is not for everyone, but gets the risk/reward ratio right.

My responce

No, not a huge risk. It’s just the impression of a huge risk – what info do you have to prove it’s a risk?

For example, say someones in front of me, flips a coin and it’s my call, heads. They hand me hundreds of game coins and I go weee! Also I don’t lose my game coins.
Now imagine someone goes off into a black box, then comes back out and hands me a few hundred game coins?

Did I face a big risk? Did they flip a coin while they were in that black box? Or did they just decide to hand out game coins to me?

Should I go weeee! or would I just be fooling myself?

Without transparent risks or atleast some level of transparency, you don’t know.

The Blizzard Authenticator - A rip off in itself

I saw an article on mmocrunch about world of warcraft authenticators. The little device that generates a second code needed to log in (you don't have the device, you can't log in, even if you've hacked the regular password). I wrote the following:


I am surprised how people are so excited to spend money on these if they are so necessary to play the game.

If it’s a necessary part of the game, why doesn’t it come with the game – or atleast after X amount of subscription time they send you one?

It’s like you guys rented a house, then your real excited to buy a lock and key for the front door – the house should come with one.

I mean, if the game didn't come with a password field at all and you 'only' had to pay $6.50 to get one, would you think that's great? No, you'd insist it should come with a password field. You'd say it's absolutely necessary to have one.

And yet you say the Blizz authenticator is absolutely necessary as well.

Like a change of government in WOW?

There's an interesting post on Tobolds MMORPG blog about the changes to WOW's looking for group system. There does seem to be a policy change in WOW group forming development, changing from 'Fend for yourselves' to some sort of actual human resource management on the part of the company.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/kudos-to-blizzard-for-honesty.html

Your Runes of Magic character motivations!

Are you on Siochain OR Macantacht server? If so, what's your Runes of Magic character motivation? Even if it's light hearted and a single sentence, that's fine! Even if your guys just a fighting guy, that counts!

Your characters motivation is important! So I'm paying 3k gold each!!! That's for 50 motivations total (I've only got so much gold!).

Leave your character name in your post (AND which server they are from), so I can mail you the gold. Or you can send me in game mail and point out which post was yours (send to 'Dreambroken', with a capital 'D'). You can post anonymously for this, that's fine. Only one entry per character per day.

I look forward to hearing your character motives!

Oh, and if motivations get a bit overly serious I might delete them here (but I'll send the gold anyway if it seemed a serious entry). There's one below that's a bit overly serious.

Grinding out grind

Grind reminds me of the old woody allen skit/joke, where he's telling his therapist he hardly ever has sex with his wife, only once or twice a week. Then his wife complains they always are having sex, usually twice a week!


Clearly game companies like you being a subscriber for a long time. But this doesn't mean they have to drag out gameplay. Take EVEs skill learning - do you have to grind that out, or set it up and it takes time, but it does so automatically and even while offline.

Now imagine if you killed a monster and got some XP, but then there was also a large amount that slowly trickled into your character, even while your offline. You don't have to grind all that XP, and the company gets it's maintained subscription.

The mmorpg model has been really strange in how it's maintained the same pattern of stretching out content, even though it drives everyone mad, rather than looking at ways that both developer and player can come to a compromise. Or is grind as we know it supposed to be a compromise?

gauntlet10

This is for the newest story gauntlet I'm running!

The game is here: http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/wilderness-gauntlet/download/1183/
Check it out, it's a short and fun shoot 'em up adventure!

To activate the easier difficulty mode (half as many badguys spawned), press enter at any time.

If you have already played and have the special code that will allow the adventure to continue, write it in the comments below!!! Or DOOM!!!

Seriously, by getting feedback I know people want more, which helps me create more! It's helping out a struggling fellow game designer! Thanks!

The log bypass code is: Press '8' on your keyboard
If you've already done the first level, the skip code is pressing '1' on your keyboard

You come to a T intersection in the dungeon...

Hi,

I have two blogs and this is a quick entry to indicate to anyone checking my forge profile, where they are. Obviously this is one of them, which is a 'monetized' blog (who knew monetized was a word, eh?). Thanks for checking it out further: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/




Here's the other, which is probably more esoteric:
http://brokenmarrow.wordpress.com/