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Hyperspace Beacon: How do I play my SWTOR class?
I understand what some Star Wars: The Old Republic players are seeking when they ask how I play my class. They want to play the game better! If they ask me, specifically, then they want to play a Marauder better. I like these guys, and I welcome any questions they have. The other kind of SWTOR player who asks how I play my class looks for the faults in my playstyle. Well, there are many of them, but that doesn't mean that some of my choices are completely bad. And like most players, I didn't learn how to play my class completely on my own. I am, like most of you, an amalgam of several different teachers. Today, I'd like to take a moment not to look at the specific ways I play a Marauder (although I might use the Marauder as an example) but to examine methods for learning and elicit tips from players who are damn good at playing MMOs.
The Art of Wushu: Chasing down Soul Chasing Claw
Soul Chasing Claw is the eponymous skill of Royal Guards and one of the most frustrating styles to counter for a new player. It's a nice, robust style with clear strengths and weaknesses, and it's one of my favorite styles in Age of Wushu even though I don't use it myself. Unfortunately, Soul Chasing Claw feels a bit unfair when it's used against you at first. It has long-range, high-damage combos that seem unstoppable, but for the most part it's smoke and mirrors. It's simply a set of tools that are useful rather than all-powerful. Most RGs that rely exclusively on this style are easy to beat for experts, but it is a useful addition to any external Yang martial artist's toolkit.
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online's reputation systems for the new player
One thing new MMO players will learn is that games that have levels inevitably also have a level cap, meaning that when a character reaches the highest level, there's not often much left to do other than to wait for a new expansion. This conundrum has left many developers trying to find ways to keep players in the game while they worked on new, larger content pushes. Many accomplish the task by creating repeatable quests or missions. Some games, Star Trek Online included, have integrated what are known as reputation systems into their games. Reputation systems are meant to keep players participating in repeatable content, allowing them to apply the currency received from that play to obtain select items and unique rewards.
The Summoner's Guidebook: A beginner's guide to League of Legends' runes
Runes are one of the easiest ways for a beginning player to waste IP in League of Legends. A lot of players spend a lot of IP on wasted runes. The truth is, you can get away with a relatively small number of useful runes and still be effective. We've gone a long, long time in the Summoner's Guidebook without a discussion of runes and rune pages, so we should fix that. A bit of a disclaimer, though: Runes are costly, and you'll have to put several new champions on hold no matter what you do. At level 20, you will want around 5,000 IP for runes, and you'll want another 10,000 or so more over the course of your career. On top of that, there is easily more you can blow on runes if you want some real diversity. I'm not here to explain that, though -- we can leave that one to the pros.
The Tattered Notebook: Navigating EQII's Nights of the Dead
Halloween is by far my favorite holiday, and EverQuest II is easily one of my favorite games of all time. So when the two combine, it's a match made in heaven. But just like the game itself, the Nights of the Dead live event has so much to it and so much to do that it is easy to become overwhelmed. Cue The Tattered Notebook! I know what it's like to want to participate fully in an event but not know where to start. And now with so many more new players (thanks in large part to the Heroic Characters), it's not even a matter of finding the little changes to this year's event. Let's be honest: Even those of us who have taken part previously can't remember every detail from year to year, especially when more is added each holiday season! So today I'm going to provide a guide to introduce you to all things Nights of the Dead.
The Summoner's Guidebook: How to get through a LoL teamfight alive
It feels good to be back to writing strategy articles about League of Legends. When I play a lot, I want to punch out words about what I'm thinking about, and while covering a tournament is exciting, I really enjoy teaching fundamentals a lot more. This week we're going to cover teamfighting again. You guys might remember some things about teamfighting from me a while back, including a basic primer and a guide on positioning. I feel that my understanding of teamfighting -- and perhaps more importantly, my ability to communicate it -- has improved a lot since then. Some of that is from watching tournament matches and listening to others talk about teamfighting, but a lot of it is from watching pro streams and hearing what is going on in a top player's head too. This edition of The Summoner's Guidebook is a continuation of both of the previous teamfighting articles, and I suggest reading them too as the information there is still useful. I definitely recommend going back and reading them after you've finished reading this if you haven't already.
Captain's Log: New-user tips on Star Trek Online's duty officer system
Let me first wish all of our readers in Canada a very happy Thanksgiving Day! This week I will continue my informal series for new Star Trek Online players with a brief primer on the game's duty officer system. More commonly referred to as DOffs, Star Trek Online's duty officers provide a player with an additional means to obtain XP, dilithium, and other rewards without his having to shoot a single thing. Many people have likened the DOff system to that of a trading card game, and to an extent they are right. The duty officers have also become a commodity that can be used in other ways outside of the assignment system itself. So join me past the jump as I delve into the very basics of the STO duty officer system.
The Guild Counsel: Speed up those slogging raids
If you ask guild members for their number one reason why they avoid making the leap from casual to a more focused, hardcore progression path, the answer would be time. Progress means raiding multiple nights for several hours, and that's time that many either don't have or aren't willing to give up. Ironically, one of the things that separates good raiding guilds from everyone else is their use of time. Cutting-edge gear and high DPS parses are fine, but even average guilds can progress quickly by making the best use of their time during the raid. And in addition, slow, monotonous raids suddenly feel vibrant and fun. Let's take a look at how to speed things up in this week's Guild Counsel.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Learning how to not lose from the League of Legends pros
The League of Legends World Championship semifinals are over, and unfortunately the two teams I was hoping would advance ended up losing. The matches were good, especially the SKT1 versus NJBS matches. Definitely watch them! However, this week I'm going to get back to basics, and by that I mean guides on improving your game. I've been talking about Worlds for weeks and I'll be at the finals in LA around the time you're reading this, which would make for four weeks of straight coverage about the LoL World Championships. That feels lazy to me. I have been watching a lot of pro matches lately, both the tournament matches and just random streams and casual matches. One thing that came to mind for me was improving our losing games. We all have them, and of all the games that we should improve upon, those are the games that are the most important. Pro players take bad lanes or feeding teammates and make wins instead. How do they do it?
Choose My Adventure: I believe I can die in Age of Wushu
Wow. What a game, Age of Wushu. I mean, I have played many, many open-world, free-for-all PvP sandboxes in my time before this one, but Age of Wushu places all of those cool systems in a world that the West generally doesn't play in and then adds in little systems so that there is always something to do. Always. In fact the most common complaint I hear about the MMO is that there is too much to do but not enough explanation to cover all of the activities. I think the real frustration comes not from the lack of guides and pop-ups but from the fact that many of these "helpful" guides are localized for English-speaking audiences enough for them to make some sense, just not enough. I mean no offense here; this is just the truth: Broken English inside a game can make already complex gameplay much harder to understand. There are many small anomalies as well. For example, an NPC referred to me as a man although my character is a woman, and when a small icon indicated that I was hungry, I ate some food, but then an icon told me, "Hungry and Thirsty. HP and internal Energy Recovery speed increases slightly, but you will need some food." Huh? I just ate... I think? Now I can see why Patrick's Age of Wushu guides are so popular!
EVE Evolved: Fitting Heavy Assault Cruisers in Odyssey 1.1
The Odyssey 1.1 patch landed this week in EVE Online, introducing several highly requested PvP tweaks and overhauling all of the Command Ships and Heavy Assault Ships. Active shield boosters, armour repairers and medium-sized long range turrets all received sizable buffs, but it's the newly updated Heavy Assault Cruisers that really took my interest. They've historically been used as highly mobile damage-dealers for fleet warfare, but now each has been targeted at a specific combat niche. The Deimos is a brawler for small-scale gang warfare, the Ishtar is a heavy drone platform, the Cerberus turns frigates into molten poop, and the Eagle is... well, nobody can really figure out what to do with the Eagle yet. All of the HACs have been augmented with a new role bonus that reduces the signature radius penalty of activating a microwarpdrive by 50%. This may seem pretty weak, but in practice it makes the ships a lot more viable in PvP. Activating your microwarpdrive will normally increase your signature radius size by 500%, making you a hell of a lot easier to hit and increasing the damage you take from missiles. The speed boost will counteract this to some degree, but it takes a while to reach that speed, and you're very vulnerable in the interim. Reducing this to only 250% means you get all the defensive benefit of the speed increase without much of the vulnerability. In most cases, you'll actually take less damage with the microwarpdrive on than off. In this week's EVE Evolved, I put together PvP setups for the at the newly revamped Deimos, Ishtar, Cerberus, and Eagle Heavy Assault Cruisers.
Massively's Final Fantasy XIV relaunch roundup
Most games don't get a second chance at a first impression, but Final Fantasy XIV is going for precisely that with its revamped version launching today as A Realm Reborn. The original launch was met with notably terrible reception, prompting the complete shutdown of the first version followed by a radically different and redeveloped game. Maybe you're just now hearing about it, or maybe you've been following the game since the first announcement, but today is when everyone can finally access the relaunch. We've put together a collection of both news and useful guides so that old players can be brought up to speed, new players can learn what to do first, and people on the fence can decide whether the game is worth playing in the first place. Enjoy our relaunch roundup past the cut, and if you decide to take part, enjoy your reborn adventures in Final Fantasy XIV!
The Mog Log Extra: Starting an Arcanist in Final Fantasy XIV
My initial plan for last Saturday's edition of The Mog Log was foiled by the simple fact that getting to Limsa Lominsa was much more difficult than it needed to be. There was no way to get to Limsa, unlock Arcanist, level Arcanist, write a column of a thousand words or more, have it proofed, and have it readable by the time that you fine people expect to read something. My apologies are deep and heartfelt. Despite that fact, once I finally did get to Limsa, I poured myself into playing Arcansit as if it was my job. Which it sort of was. And I found that to my pleasant surprise, despite the fact that the class is everything I usually dislike in a class, I was having an absolute blast. I wouldn't say it's my favorite class in Final Fantasy XIV, but it's up there. But you don't care too much about that, do you? You want to know how to play one. Luckily, I can tell you that, too.
The Road to Mordor: Getting over the 40s hump in LotRO
Sometimes column topics are handed to you on a timely platter of complaints. Over the past week, I've heard several people in the Massively office and in my guilds talk about how they hit a wall in Lord of the Rings Online in the level 40 range. If you hear just one person talk about it, it's probably nothing. But when four or five mention it independent of each other, I think it's important enough to discuss. The 40s are a tricky time for LotRO players. It's the last stretch of pre-expansion road that must be traveled, the levels start taking longer, and unlike much of the 1-40 content, 40-50 really never has been revamped to bring it in line with the rest of the game. As a result, for some the 40s can be a slow slog that requires a lot of zone hopping to conquer. Oddly enough, it's never been a big problem for me, although I think I approach LotRO in a slightly different way than some. In any case, today we're going to examine the "40s hump" and come up with a few strategies to get over it and get into Moria ASAP.
The International: A Primer on Dota 2 and the biggest single-game tournament in eSports history
Dota is a Big Deal. The original Defense of the Ancients, which was nothing more than a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, became a core pillar of the competitive online gaming scene thanks to its tight balance and deep strategy. It was played by millions and showcased at tournaments across the globe. Dota is considered one of the primary influences on the now booming genre of games that we refer to as MOBAs; League of Legends is supposedly the biggest game in the world, but without Dota, it would have never existed. When Valve snagged the mod's developer, known as IceFrog, and charged him with making a sequel, expectations were high. Dota is a game celebrated for its intricate design, complex metagame, and robust character roster -- the pressure to improve on this formula without losing the basics was immense. It took over two years of somewhat closed beta testing to get everything right, and changes rolled out every week like Clockwerk. But that's all history. Dota 2 launched last month, finally. For better or worse, the game is considered complete (minus a few heroes). And what better way to celebrate the launch of a hotly anticipated title than by throwing one of the biggest tournaments in all of competitive gaming? Welcome to The International.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Divorcing skill from teaching skills in League of Legends
League of Legends is a game where skill takes many forms. Knowledge is a skill, as is mechanical execution, adaptability, decision-making, and prediction. In LoL, the emphasis is mostly on decision-making and knowledge. This doesn't mean that the other skills aren't necessary to become a great player, but being a good player mostly requires those skills. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I'm not a great player. If I were, I'd probably be trying to get on a pro team (or I'd already be on one). Even "good" is debatable. I am kind of emotional when I play, and it messes me up. I tend to surrender vote early, which sometimes brings my team down. I am not a team player. I tend to rely on my superior mechanics. Even my mechanics are bad compared to great players. I tend to think of myself as OK at best and that most people are just awful. However, I also think I'm pretty good at teaching people how to play. LoL has a lot of games-within-a-game to play, and I'm not too bad at explaining how those things work over time. I'd like to think I'm good at giving commentary (both positive and negative) to a player trying to learn. I could be a coach, and I sort of am -- I get to coach all of you guys, after all.
Wings Over Atreia: A quick guide to Aion 4.0 dungeons
Last time, when sharing my initial impressions of Aion Dark Betrayal, I mentioned how the expansion was so big that there was no way one Wings Over Atreia could cover it all. Well, that's putting it mildly; there's no way two or ten can, either! in fact, I am still finding gems tucked away both in game and in the patch notes, so we'll definitely have plenty to discuss for a while. This week, we're going to try to make a dent in that pile of topics by grabbing one and just running with it. Up this week: 4.0 dungeons. Now, this guide is not going to delve deeply into tips, tricks, or strategies for Aion's newest dungeons. Instead, it's concerned with the who, the where, and the why, offering a synopsis of each new instance and a look at the lore behind it. Heck, with 12 new dungeons, that's about all we could fit in -- and only half of them at that! Check out six of these new dungeons now, and stay tuned for the second half of our guide next time.
The Summoner's Guidebook: A League of Legends guide to guides
The goal of The Summoner's Guidebook is and always has been to encourage the development of player skill in League of Legends, especially for beginner and intermediate players. The focus on developing individual skills means that we do fewer in-depth guides on specific elements of the game. When I write about why you should not always buy Deathcap, I'm trying to help you develop the critical thinking skills to look at items and make in-the-moment value decisions about which item is better. I could use any item, but Deathcap has a lot of little things to think about. Either way, there are other guides out there for League of Legends. Let's not kid ourselves here. There are thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of guides out there. Actually, there are probably thousands of websites that provide information on LoL of some kind or another. The Guidebook is really just a drop in the ocean. Therefore, this week I'm going to talk about them.
The Art of Wushu: The truth about mind games and timing
Once upon a time, I was teaching a friend how to duel in Age of Wushu. She was easily frustrated by things, and she expressed to me that she felt as if everyone had superhuman reflexes compared to her. Because she was a beginner, I couldn't just convey all the complexity of mind games to her. Explaining all the different options (beyond the basics), weighting them, and explaining the opportunity costs of each was not really an option. She was having trouble even with slightly advanced stuff (which is totally normal), but she also lacked some of the natural "killer instinct" that allows some of my other friends to duel. At the same time, I had been fighting Zyden, one of the most skilled duelists in English-speaking Age of Wushu. He actually does have near-superhuman reflexes. Earlier that day, though, I had hit him with a very slow-animating feint that he normally interrupts with a stun. Normally, his reactions are superhuman, but there are some times when they aren't. It's not a matter of "off day," either. He just wasn't prepared for me to do what I did right at that moment. I told my friend, "Outside of a moment, you can only react." Immediately afterwards, I realized just how important those words were.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Getting friends to enjoy League of Legends
I find the mainstream success of League of Legends to be extremely baffling. If you break down the skills you need to be an effective player in the MOBA genre, they are daunting. The mechanical skill cap to be acceptable is unacceptably high, and the knowledge burden is enormous. Other MOBAs have dozens of characters and hundreds or thousands of matchups. League of Legends' character pool is so unbelievably large that even professionals cannot grasp the entirety of its design space. While I can't fathom how normal people find a game this hard fun, I can simply accept it. That makes it quite possible to get our friends and significant others hooked. However, because League is a hard game, it is probably best that we be careful when we try to teach our friends. It's pretty easy to scare them with the enormous difficulty in the game.
