experience
Latest
MGM lets potential employees try out jobs in VR before signing on
MGM Resorts is letting applicants try out casino and hotel jobs in virtual reality (VR) before signing on.
'Away Mission' is a free-roaming 'Star Trek' VR experience
When Starfleet calls, Trekkies will answer, and Starfleet's latest call to action involves the world's first free-roam Star Trek experience. Later this year Sandbox VR will launch the first Holodeck VR experience, where fans can enter the world of Star Trek to complete a mission involving problem-solving, combat and -- of course -- phasers.
The unconventional analogies of ‘Your Hands Are Feet’
Last week, we held the first Engadget Experience in LA, where Your Hands Are Feet was one of five immersive art projects to debut. The virtual reality experience drops you into a surreal world, full of experiential metaphors. Experiences like, for instance, what it's like to shave a giant's hairy pink leg in the desert. In our documentary, creators Sarah Rothberg and Amelia Winger-Bearskin explain their working partnership, visual style and the inspiration behind their psychedelic worlds.
Amazon is building a haunted house to hype its spooky 'Lore' series
Amazon's podcast-turned-series Lore is launching on Friday, October 13th, just in time for pre-Halloween fun. But the online shopping has more up its sleeve to get folks in the right spooky holiday spirit. Amazon is opening an immersive haunted house experience in Los Angeles next month that's themed to the show's thesis: "The scariest stories are often true."
Airbnb goes beyond spare rooms with 'experiences' and 'places'
It's no secret that Airbnb has ambitions beyond renting out spare rooms. Not least because local authorities keep throwing water on its core business model. The company has already made some acquisitions in the "experience" space, and run trials offering local guides and excursions to match your local accommodation. Today CEO Brian Chesky finally gave us a concrete idea of exactly what Airbnb's holistic future, and on-demand travel in general, will look like.
Pathfinder Online's Ryan Dancey on early adopter experience bonuses
On yesterday's Massively Speaking podcast, Justin and I discussed Pathfinder Online's plans for granting its earliest and most loyal players what seems to be the ultimate character bonus: an experience edge over everyone else, forever. I'll let the Pathfinder Online dev post Hard is Fun! explain verbatim: Our game uses a unique real-time based XP system. Characters gain XP through the passage of time, not through being logged in. So the characters that are created in the first month will be the characters with the most XP for all time. A special perk will be in effect that backdates XP to the start of Early Enrollment for the first month so no matter when you purchase an account, if you create a character in Month 1, you'll have that maximum XP. Usually games with offline experience systems also have either a hard cap or a diminishing returns mechanic to avoid the core "sandbox problem" -- that those who get to the sandbox first perpetually have the most power because they claim all the best toys (and so on). But as written, the Pathfinder Online system seems to exacerbate rather than fix that problem by promising "pioneers" more power in the form of permanently more experience. Suspecting there was more to the plan, we asked Goblinworks' Ryan Scott Dancey to explain just how it plans to balance its concessions to early backers with its presumed desire to attract newbie players in the more distant future. He's done so, in detail, for us today.
PAX East 2014: First impressions of Warlords of Draenor
The biggest problem that Warlords of Draenor is facing right now is one of first impressions. This isn't a mark against World of Warcraft so much as it's the nature of the beast. I wrote a while back about how World of Warcraft can't really be back, all things considered; it's too firmly a part of the establishment to ever shake the image that it's created over the past several years. You know what it is. You know how it plays. Odds are good that you've played it. Warlords of Draenor also features no new races, no new classes, no overhaul of the talent system, and in the build I got to play, very few of the new models. That's where the first impression problem crops up. A lot of the things that are being baked into the expansion just don't show up at first glance. That isn't to say that the first glance is bad, just that it overwhelmingly sends the message of "this is still World of Warcraft; no need for elaboration."
The Elder Scrolls Online beta is absolutely nothing special
I've always had a profound antipathy toward the Elder Scrolls franchise. Part of this may very well be timing; the first three major installments released when I didn't have a computer that could handle them (I was generally more of a console gamer), and so I've no memories of happily chugging away across Tamriel as a young lad to sustain me. But I've also never seen anything that's reached out and grabbed me, no inspiring bits of lore, no systems that particularly grab my interest, just the promise that "you can do anything you want" without a great deal of encouragement. The point I'm making here is that the franchise is not my jam. But that's part of the reason I wanted to try out The Elder Scrolls Online in the first place. Sure, at a glance, it seemed like a fairly generic fantasy RPG that had the weight of a franchise behind it, but that's an evaluation based on nothing but bits of story and gameplay videos. So I settled in over the past weekend to play the beta and see what all the fuss was about, to give it a more fair evaluation than one based simply on the name of the franchise and what I saw at a glance.
.png.cf.jpg)
MMO Mechanics: Exploring death mechanics
They say death must come to us all, and that inevitability extends to our characters in MMOs. The death of our characters may be inconvenient when we want to plough through content, but penalising failure is an essential part of any MMO and further incentivises success by making you learn from your mistakes. As much as players crave gratification through rewards and progression, they also need to feel that such progress has been well-earned and greatly deserved. Rewards become that much sweeter when we must risk something to secure them, and failure without consequence would render the gains made in our favourite MMOs insignificant. Without a considerable death penalty, it becomes possible to mindlessly crush content through brute force. I don't know about you, but I don't find fun in bashing my skull repeatedly with a rock in an attempt to crack it! In this week's MMO Mechanics, I compare various death penalties and the effects they have on the MMOs that employ them. I'll explore just how tangible death penalties such as corpse running, gear durability loss, and XP drain make our character's demise feel.
Final Fantasy XI celebrates 11 years 11 ways
Final Fantasy XI is 11 years old this year (11 years and six months at this point, but that's nitpicking). So it seems appropriate that the title is kicking off a big anniversary event on November 11th. Except that it's really kicking off not one big anniversary event but 11 smaller ones. You see the theme at work. Whether you've been around for all 11 years or just 11 days, there's plenty of rewards available for everyone. Seal drop rates are improved for all characters in a party during the anniversary timeframe, as are are double synthesis skill increase rates and several seal-based battlefield rewards. Players will also earn double experience, doubled Salvage drops, doubled Monstrosity experience, doubled Shining Stars in Mog Gardens... the list goes on. Almost anything you choose to do between now and November 25th will see a significant boost, so take a look at the full list of bonuses and get ready to enjoy 11 bonuses for the next 14 days. (They can't all line up perfectly.)
The Soapbox: On your deathbed, you will not regret gaming
In last week's edition of The Soapbox, Mike Foster reminded us that the grim specter of death comes to us all and asserted that when your time comes, "you will not wish you had spent more time gaming." Mike took the stance that gaming provides temporary joys that can't replace real-life experiences and that it's our inherent responsibility as human beings with finite lifespans to seek out those experiences. He argued that "gaming is a hobby and not a replacement for a life well-lived" and that it's not our gaming achievements but our real life ones that we'll proudly tell our grandchildren. I think we can all agree that it's important to have offline hobbies and interests that help you keep active, but I take exception to the notion that we might regret time spent gaming on our deathbeds. Published data on the top five regrets of the dying actually seems to directly refute this idea, and my life experiences have shown the exact opposite of some of the points Mike makes. MMOs have given me some experiences that I'll probably treasure for a lifetime, and gaming as a hobby has provided me with much more than just temporary joys and escapism; it's helped me discover talents I didn't know I possessed, given me the push I needed to get a good education, led me to employment, and put me in contact with lifelong friends. On my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd spent more time gaming rather than less. In this opinion piece, I look at evidence that suggests we won't regret gaming on our deathbeds and make the case that gaming can be just as worthwhile as offline pursuits.
Daily iPhone App: Ending is an excellently pure gaming experience
Ending is one of my favorite kinds of games. It's an almost language-free experience. When the game starts, all you're given is a few arrows and a hammer as icons on the screen. That's it. The two arrows lead to the game's two different modes. The first is a puzzle mode, where you have a series of levels to navigate through. The way the game works is that you can move your little protagonist (represented by a stylized "@" symbol, in reference to the great roguelike genre) around by swiping, and you can conquer any of your "enemies" on the screen by swiping into them. The problem is that those enemies can also defeat you with one hit, so you need to make sure that whenever you move, you're not sliding into a square in danger. The second mode is an endless version of the puzzle stages, where all of the enemies that you gradually find in the puzzle game run after you right away. It's a wild take on the roguelike genre that doesn't use any words to teach you what to do: It's just a very pure game. The hammer launches a level-creation mode, which was cool, but confusing. Some things might require a little bit of language. Still, fans of the game probably won't need anything more than that mass of buttons, and the rest of us have plenty to play with in the other modes anyway. Ending is a terrific title, and it's one of those games that does a whole lot with very little. Developer Aaron Steed has put together a really interesting take on what's essentially dungeon exploration, and at a universal price of just US$0.99, this one is a must try.
The Daily Grind: Do you like experience boost events?
If you've got one last alt in Star Wars: The Old Republic that you want at 50 before the expansion goes live, this weekend is the time to make it happen. You've got doubled experience gains, after all. For someone like me who has reached the level cap multiple times over, the fact that I could suddenly jump in and scream up in levels has been a very pleasant departure from the norm over the last few weekends. However, that came with a downside. Sure, during the weekends I could blast through leveling, but during the rest of the week I found I didn't want to touch any characters that were still leveling. Why push hard when I could just wait and get another experience rush? A lot of games like to turn on increased experience gains at various points, usually during weekends. Do you like these experience boost events? Or do you feel they cheapen the leveling experience as a whole? 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!
Bashiok clarifies pet battle XP hotfix
Overnight, Blizzard rolled out a hotfix on all servers nerfing the obscenely high XP people were gaining from winning pet battles. You can no longer level characters to 89 in a matter of hours by hanging around capital cities battling level 1 pets. Bashiok explains how and why they implemented the nerf. Bashiok We're in the process of updating the hotfixes blog with the recent changes to Pet Battle XP, but wanted to provide a bit more insight into why the changes were made and how XP is calculated. All buffs to player XP (heirlooms, enlightenment, guild bonus etc.) were bugged, these where hotfixed to work as expected. General player XP from pet battles was tuned too high, these numbers have been balanced accordingly. Player experience is granted based on a number of factors. These are player level, number of pet opponents, maximum pet opponent level and the level disparity between opponents pets and your pets. Our philosophy is that player XP from pet battles should be, in general, somewhat slower than normal questing. source While almost everyone agrees that it was not in the game's best interest to allow the ridiculously speedy leveling players were taking advantage of, the nerf at first seemed excessive. Whereas one could get 28K for winning a level 1 pet battle at level 60, this morning the same character got 900 to 2000. But as Bashiok describes above, the XP now scales appropriately according to level of the player and the pets in the battles. I've been experimenting and I agree that they have succeeded in making pet battles slower than questing, but not a complete waste of time. If you are questing in a level appropriate area, taking time out to battle the wild pets in the same zone is definitely worth doing to add variety and experience to your endeavors. Also, heirlooms, XP buffs, guild bonuses all still affect pet battle player XP, so do go take a ride on the Darkmoon Faire Carousel before you test the hotfix for yourself. Did you take advantage of the insane leveling XP? I did only for a few levels. A grind's a grind, after all, and there are new islands to explore.
Patch 5.2: Leveling XP via pet battles
It is no longer a waste of leveling time to battle pets with lower level characters. With the advent of patch 5.2, players can now earn XP from pet battles. (If you're max level, you have a chance of getting Lesser Charms of Good Fortune instead.) All you have to do is participate in any pet battle -- other than dueling -- with your highest pet being no more than five levels above the pets you are fighting. This includes pet battle PvP, where you queue up from your pet journal, just not the pet battle duels you can do with friends ... or strangers, for that matter. The experience is comparable to completing the capital city cooking and fishing quests. For example, my level 77 mage gets 27K XP from the Orgrimmar cooking dailies and gets 26K for fighting a battle with three level 1s vs. a level 2. The XP varies according to how much higher your highest pet that your battling with is above the pets you are fighting. A four level difference nets my mage about 21K XP. Whether you are battling other players, wild pets or tamers, the XP gained is consistent. Is it worth it to try to level via pet battling? I would recommend questing, gathering, archaeology digging and battling pets in the same zone to maximize your leveling potential. But if you're in a gotta-catch-'em-all frenzy, as I sometimes am, you can battle pets with your leveling alts while still progressing more than just your pets. I wouldn't be surprised if players tried to level while just pet battling. Will you be taking advantage of pet battle player XP?
Patch 5.2 PTR: Updated abilities and quality of life changes for pet battles
I find myself logged onto a different character every time I'm doing a round of pet battle dailies. It shouldn't be an issue, because pets are account bound, but there's just one little thing: Battle Pet Bandages. I never earn any on my main character -- maybe it's bad luck. It's very frustrating to end up with a defeated team, Revive Battle Pets on cooldown, and no stable master nearby. Oh, and no bandages! Well, it feels like the devs really have been listening to the battle pet community, because they released a few quality of life updates on the PTR that (mostly) will make pet battlers happy campers. Battle Pet Bandages now stack and are Bind to Account. Level-capped players will now have a chance to earn Lesser Charms of Good Fortune after winning a pet battle versus a pet within 5 levels of the highest level pet on their team. Higher-level pets will offer a better chance to earn a charm. Winning a pet battle versus a team within 5 levels of the player's highest-level pet will now award player experience. I'm so happy to see that pet bandages will be Bind to Account. Being able to funnel every precious bandage to one character will make things much easier -- especially for the altoholics out there. And three huge huzzahs to earning stuff while battling pets! It takes quite a bit of time to grind every pet battle achievement, even with power leveling newbie pets. So, earning rewards normally reserved for playing through PvE content turns pet battling into time well spent. I'm tempted to level a character solely through pet battles, now that winning one will grant player experience! You can check out the full list of updated pet battle patch notes at the official site, but to make things easier we've compiled the complete list of notes after the break.
Enter at Your Own Rift: The burden of leveling
I've seen a lot of positive comments about RIFT: Storm Legion so far, many of which are praising the expansion's zone designs, the new classes, and especially the Dimensions housing system. However, it seems that there's another comment that pops up frequently that's not as kind: It takes way too long to level from 50 to 60. For some of you, this may be moot. You might already be level 60, have multiple 60s, or have been 60 since the day after Storm Legion came out. For others who aren't even level 50 yet, the expansion might sound a bit intimidating because of the hefty XP requirements to move that level marker up one number. In any case, I think that a good number of us can agree that it's definitely a slow process that detracted from rather than added to the experience of Storm Legion. I've got several thoughts about how leveling in RIFT has become a burden instead of a blessing, how Trion is reshaping the XP game, and what this might portend for the future of the title.
Daily iPhone App: Starbloom is musical mystery magic
Starbloom, the first iOS title from Shadegrown Games, isn't exactly the biggest or most content-filled title on the App Store this year. There are only five levels in the game, each with an original song to play through, and the menus mostly consist of some text against a black starfield. But I think this is a game that's more than the sum of its parts: the graphics and design, along with that really amazing soundtrack, make this a musical experience that you probably shouldn't miss. The "game" here is really the weakest part. You guide a sort of comet-like object around the screen, trying to collect rings of little widgets for points. But when you collect each of those objects, you add a musical sound to each track, and the experience kind of ascends to something else -- a musical instrument governed by orbital motion. Starbloom might not be for you, and that's fine. There are definitely better values for your money on the App Store. But for US$0.99, it's an experience worth having.
The Tattered Notebook: Experiencing experience in EQII
It's time to talk about experience. No, not the experience that comes from immersing yourself in a virtual world and creating memorable moments. I'm talking about the numerical value assigned to the various things you do in game, the kind of experience everyone wants and never has enough of. EverQuest II underwent a recent change in how experience is awarded, and it got me thinking about experience in general in our MMOs. How far have we come when it comes to the experience reward system, and will we ever arrive at a system that satisfies everyone?
Darkmoon Faire updates in store for patch 5.1
Those patiently waiting for additional updates to the Darkmoon Faire will only have to wait until patch 5.1 for more to do and items to collect! Wowhead dug up the latest details on the Darkmoon Faire, including several new pets as well as a new attraction. The Darkmoon Carousel can be ridden with tickets, and it has an added bonus for leveling players -- you'll receive a buff simply titled WHEE! that increases experience and reputation gain by 10% for an hour. The Darkmoon Faire also gets its own Master Pet Trainer for players to defeat. Jeremy Feasel will be available on the island with a monkey, a tonk, and a Darkmoon Eye for players to defeat. What's that Darkmoon Eye all about? Apparently it's a new pet that's available from Darkmoon Pet Supplies -- something that may be obtained from beating Jeremy Feasel. If you haven't been doing any Darkmoon Faire dailies recently, now would be a good time to start, as there's a new pet available for tickets. The Darkmoon Hatchling is an adorable mini version of the Swift Forest Strider already available at the Faire. It'll set you back 90 tickets, but it's completely adorable -- and who doesn't like a pet that matches a favorite mount? Visit Wowhead for more details on the new items and sites from the Darkmoon Faire. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
