JamesGoblin

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Posts posted by JamesGoblin

  3. Posted

    5.Chess, offline (Yes, that's how little the market has to offer me ATM).

     

    4.Fallout 4 - this one might rise to even higher positions over time.

     

    3.Elder Scrolls Online - Cyrodiil, PvP and stuff...say no more =)

     

    2.Vanilla WoW - yes, the glasses are colored rose, shiny fluorescent neon rose <3

     

    1.Warhammer Online - "But, it was shut down in 2013??" - Yes, it was...

     

     

    THE SWINDLE  :buyme:

     

    I'm mainly posting this so I can have "most recent post" on all four boards, but also because it's an ace game. Spoiler tagged for the people who are sick of me going on about it:

     

    Full of character and very well balanced (imo - many would disagree). As long as you accept that it is not a big deal to fail, that the upgrade curve is unusual (it takes a while to start picking up loads of cash per level and gain a few safety nets, but once you hit that point the player power exponentially opens up), and that by design you are not able to 100% all things all the time, it's very enjoyable and addictive.

     

    Also: Quake.

     

    I like the spoiler idea very much, an excellent way to protect others from myself <3

     

    Bookmarked!

  4. Posted

    The crafters are finally revaled; All the crafting lovers outthere - prepare for the avalanche!

    Besides that, Newsletter 17 is out, same as yesterday's Evening Update, with my new favorite pic inside - Viking caravan master (naturally, I prefer TDD/Arthurians, but the image is kinda nice - so I hope you will forgive me this little betrayal).

     

     

    And now, it's time for some controversy.

    First of all, I have to make a little intro here before the crowd starts going "looks like crap!" (as many did on Youtube and reddits): this below is an alpha test footage, with pre-alpha low poly/texture models, animations (including even walking) are placeholders etc. - this is NOT the game.

    What the video below is showing are some alpha biomes (first half) and 600+ players/bots fighting in a very small area, with high framerate, quite big rendering distance, hundreds of trees/bushes fully rendered etc. - at that point basically any other engine would crash and burn long time ago.

    So here is that (in)famous video:

     

     

    PS There is already quite lively discussion on MMORPG reddit (and couple other places) about that video upthere, including some folks from CSE.

  6. Posted

    I'm also not arguing that they don't have good reason to think it's a good idea, it's just that the peculiarities of this kind of PvP means that asymmetric multiplayer is much more fragile than it is in, say, Starcraft. They may have a cunning plan to counter this, I don't know, but I know that this kind of PvP is extremely difficult to get right: I know of at least five games that have tried this style of PvP, more if you count games with only two factions, and I think there's really only been one, maybe two, unqualified successes.

     

    (I've never understood the argument that not having to balance for PvE makes things easier. If you're balancing for PvP, properly, you're considering a lot of different scenarios, and those scenarios change depending on the balancing decisions you make. If you're already committed to PvP balancing, PvE balancing isn't much more of a burden because you're only adding a handful of new scenarios. Adding a new class is much more disruptive to balance and yet people don't seem to find that a problem.

     

    Well okay, I guess I do understand the argument, I just think it's ignorant.)

     

    Hey, thanks for kind words =)

     

    The RvR balance comes from the people that virtually created the genre some 15 years ago, and "no PvE balance required..." is not even controversial - I heard it a number of times from various developers, besides it being quite simple to grasp as a concept.

     

    Edit: another bit of info from tests -  https://twitter.com/CityStateGames/status/677642642063237122; Take a minute to let that sink in =)

  8. Posted

    I think we've proved by now that just because both extremes are complaining doesn't mean you've found the happy medium. I'm willing to wait and see, but if one of the factions gets it into their head that they're underpowered, there's going to be no dislodging that. Every nerf will be the developer vendetta; every buff, something they should have done a long time ago.

     

    But of course, the "as long as all three..." wasn't ment to be taken at face value; It was said half jokingly and half about listenining carefully to who is actually very loud and annoyed, since all three factions are going to have vocal complainers no matter what. And of course, that feedback would be only a part in decision making.

     

    Tears, ragequits and forum dramas are inevitable part of that landscape. One of my points was that they have a very good reason for somewhat painful, non-mirrored chaos of classes, and that it's actually not as silly as it might look at first glance.

     

    I have no illusions about that approach - It will be not easy, but only eased by no PvE & 1vs1 balancing: "Balancing this will be the ongoing nightmare." - Mark Jacobs, the CEO.

  9. Posted

    I am looking forward to the inevitable complaints that the other faction is overpowered.

     

    One of the key reasons why asymmetric balance works is that players can play as the faction/character that beat them, and discover that they're not overpowered after all, they just suck at the game. I think, if you're locked to a faction, that's going to be hard to achieve.

     

    Also I don't know how they're going to manage keeping the teams even. Normally three-way fights eventually end up with one faction permanently locked out.

     

    It is good "as long as all three keep on complaining" (Andrew Meggs, CU Technical Director). Very important "detail" is that they don't have to balance, additionally, for PvE and/or 1vs1 which would make it not hard but impossible. It will be some kind of rock-paper-scissors on the level of appropriate trios of classes (one from each realm) and somethng else on the level of Realms.

     

    Locking people to one Realm per server, same as non-mirrored classes (and many other details), is very much connected to the Realm Pride and building the community.  People that played Mark's previous Dark Age of Camelot remember shouts such as "Hib for life!" very well =) Hard to achieve that if anybody can go anywhere and be anything, which is kind of "modern" approach. Also, horizontal leveling and no PvE gear treadmill will help a lot with eventual rerolls.

     

    Finally, perfectly  balancing the Realms is, OFC, impossible but there is couple things that can be done, including zergs.

  12. Posted

    The thumbnail for that video gave me hope that there'd be a donkey class in that game, presumably to lug other people's equipment around for them.

    Actually, there was serious consideration of Phouka class sometime 2 years ago (CSE calims it's "still a possibility") - a speed class shapeshifting into mounts and/or summoning mounts for allies. Now, what the game will certainly have are caravans and, likely, pack mules and such, but it will be just "regular" animals.

  13. Posted

    In a series of live streams that ended this Friday, Camelot Unchained revealed it's 30 classes, with three more (the Crafters) to be revealed in a week or two.

     

    2975545-atroslika.jpg

     

    The classes of Camelot are not mirrored between it's three Realms (factions), that is - each Realm will have 11 unique classes. Speaking of factions,

    covers each class (separated in Trios, the way they were revealed) and it's connections to Celtic, Arthurian and Scandinavian lore. Say, here is the first one:

     

     

    PS The game is in alpha testing and still under the NDA (non disclosure agreement - tests are closed to non-backers, no streams etc.) which should drop as current major graphical overhaul ends and beta tests begin in Q1 2016.

  14. Posted

    Oh! Oh! Beautiful!

    Pratt is a master of visual storytelling.

    I really enjoy the comics did when he was in Argentina and post-Corto Maltese.

    I personally think this comic is his best work:

    gli_scorpioni_del_deserto_1.jpg

    5ea90f74e5a852e68199173908074e31.jpg

    He was always spot on with military and native costuming and traditions.

    Thanks for the recommendation, I was unaware of that one!?

     

    Besides his graphical qualities (one can take lots of his images from comics and frame them straight onto the wall), what touched me here was the story beneath the images, the actual script - it's about us and our dreams and their, often brutal, clash with reality.

     

    PS Sorry for late reply, Is there some kind of notification tool here, like "X quoted you" or "Y referred to you by @..." or "Z said something in your thread", anything alike? Or do we have to re-check it all manually on and on?

  15. Posted

    <3

     

    While I miss Stewart's color, the B&W really makes the comic and I think if it was in color it would have changed the atmosphere and the feel of the comic.

     

    What I mean by that this is A. I think a visual love letter to comics of the past, especially to Latin American comic strips. The final panel reminds of the great Hugo Pratt. Hell, I could see it in Corto Maltese.

    B. This comic takes place in during the Rubber Boom, it's golden years and I think it would have been weird for it to have been in color; we're moving into the past. I may be just weird, I'm used to seeing that past through B&W photography and that's how I see it. I know it's not, but my vision of it has been colored through what I've seen and how it's talked about.

    unnamed-52.jpg

    EDIT:

    Here's a Pratt as a reference 

     

    pratt-1.jpg

     Ah, Corto...the color rarely does him justice, thou there are some exceptions.

     

    My favorite (sorry for Serbian and the color) would be "The Lagoon of Mysteries" or whatever the original name is; Here's couple scenes, I'm sure you will remember:

     

    26.jpg

    27.jpg

    28.jpg

  16. Posted

    Chuck Norris killed her lol

     

    This is probably more iconic to me than either of those, simply because it was what I logged into most of the time (horde 4lyfe):

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuLMkfG_Xu0

     

    Also, in remembrance of all the nelf characters I created and abandoned over the years:

     

    Orgrimmar is somewhat tense for my taste, it likely reminds me subconcsiously that I forgot something to do in bank, on auction or with trainer... which makes it somewhat tricky choice for background music o,O

     

    PS speaking of Elves, I've read in lore that they once were immortal and then became same as the others. Having that in mind, I made an Orc warior in order to help them with the conversion. Lok tar ogar!

     

    PPS Teldrassil is easily my 3rd, or even second on some rainy days =)

  20. Posted

    I just re-discovered an ancient French movie from 1981 that has special place in my heart. It was named by French cmic magazine & series, Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal).

    I remember wanting to see this one sooo much as a kid. The scene is early 80s Yugoslavia, communism and stuff, one or maybe two TV channels operating for 7-8 hours total daily, on average one movie per week (Sunday evening, and after that - Smurfs <3).

    My life back then was basically waiting for Sundays. Now, there was a SF/comics TV show with intro made of scenes from Heavy Metal (Métal hurlant, the movie); Of course, I was clueless about the name, or even about it being a movie - in my child imagination, it was some kind of neverending cartoon series that I would be allowed to watch every day, not just on Sundays =)

    Here's couple minutes of footage, kind of trailer:

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2_gOpU0eWU


     

  21. Posted

    I have somewhat unusual habit of either dropping a book after only 10-15 pages or re-reading the same one for 4-5 or even more times (especially if I like it a lot) and/or (re)reading more of them simultaneously.

    Besides some "boring" chess ones, I'm currently going (on and on...) through some 20th century Serbian writers (typically never even translated to English, thus no point in giving titles, I guess), Proust's "In Search of lost Time" and Camus' "The Stranger".