bad-choices
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Storyboard: As stupid does
Playing a stupid character is oddly frustrating because it's incredibly difficult to do. This should not be the case. This should, in fact, be the opposite of the case. Playing someone with the mental alacrity of a ball of twine should be much easier than your brilliant wizard. But when you try to play a dumb character, it's easy for that character to wind up slipping into periods of pointless stupidity without acting like any of the nitwits you've actually dealt with over the course of your life. Intelligence is a hard thing to quantify at the best of times, but some of our characters are meant to be just plain slow. I've played a few, and it's always a challenge to make the character feel like a person instead of a caricature. So here are some tips for making your big dummy feel appropriately oafish and endearing instead of just being a strawman.
The Daily Grind: Do you worry about making the wrong choice?
It's generally very difficult to make wrong choices in an MMO. You can make choices that are less than optimal, definitely, and even choices that you later regret, but there's almost always a way to respec and try again. Even if you can't do that, you can always reroll and transfer most of your stuff from one character to another. Despite all of this, as I sat down to choose my first powers in Champions Online, I found myself very nervous that I'd pick the wrong thing for my character. I'm pretty sure that level 5 is far too early for me to have any chance of ruining my character forever, and I can always drop a few bucks and try again if that turns out to be the case, but I still couldn't help but have that fear that making the wrong choices would be disastrous. So what about you? Do you occasionally worry about making the wrong choice with your character, even if you know that most of those choices can be remade if it turns out you were wrong? Or do you forge ahead without fear, confident it will all work out in the end? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Real ID disaster averted... or is it?
Well, it's all over after all. The evil dragon released by Blizzard has been slain by Blizzard again, after several days of people alternately cursing and staring slack-jawed in disbelieving horror. We can all go back to slaughtering Internet Dragons again, and the privacy issues are dealt with forever. Or if not forever, at least for now. Important lessons have been learned, lives have been ruined, and we can all go back to the way things were a couple days ago. Or can we? When your friend has a few drinks and smashes your entire living room to pieces but apologizes for it afterward, you usually aren't going to toss him a beer the next time he's at your house. Even though the unpopular decision has been reversed, it's understandable if your ire toward World of Warcraft hasn't cooled just yet... or if your trust in Blizzard isn't wholly restored. Are you willing to forgive and forget? Or is this the sort of thing you're going to remember for a long time?
The Daily Grind: What do you do when someone just doesn't get it?
Tackling the endgame rush in any game can be a difficult proposition, whether it's the brutality of Final Fantasy XI or the staggered progression of World of Warcraft. It's always made more difficult, however, when someone doesn't understand what he's supposed to be doing. Sometimes, even instructional videos, pseudo-Gregorian chants, and screaming epithets over ventrilo will all fail to get someone to realize that he needs to stay put during Flame Wreath. And there are only so many times a group can take failure when there's an obvious weak link in the chain. On the one hand, we've all had one or two things that we know we ought to do, but we're just not quite capable of doing reliably. On the other, there comes a point when the rest of the group is paying for one person's persistent mistakes. So how do you handle that one guy who can't seem to get what he's supposed to be doing? Do you try and get him kicked out? Kick yourself out pre-emptively? Or do you just resort to blaming him for any and all failures?
