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Seen@E3: Capcom's display loot in six seconds
Sure, Capcom has some games at E3, but it also has lovely, lovely loot. Admittedly, I wasn't able to fit all of what was on show into six seconds. Also, I'm pretty sure I was intruding on Ryu and Chun-Li's alone time. [Image: Capcom]
WildStar unveils the details of raids
WildStar wants to have its raids be big. Big in size. Big in rewards. Big in engagement. Big in lots of ways, in short. The team has talked about them in passing elsewhere, most notably at PAX East 2014, but there still hasn't been a nice big info drop about raids that potential players could really sink their teeth into. Like the sort of reveal that accompanies a new DevSpeak video. So guess what's past the cut? Go ahead, guess. Very good, it's the raiding video (something you could have concluded from the headline, yes), but there's more besides. We had a chance to sit down and talk with Brett Scheinert, the dungeon & raid lead developer, regarding these high-end encounters and what will set WildStar apart from other titles offering a raiding endgame. And despite what those opening lines might have made you think, it's not just about size. (It's also Spinal Tap references. You can guess which ones.)
Destiny dev diary details armor, weapons, and loot
Destiny's making headlines this week, and it's not simply due to the sci-fantasy shooter's rumored $500 million price tag. Bungie lead designer Lars Bakken and community manager Dave Dague have taken center stage in a three-minute video designed to show off the title's armor, weapons, and loot. View it in its entirety after the cut.
Landmark updates testing blueprint
EverQuest Franchise Lead Dave Georgeson critted Landmark testers with a wall of text late last night, updating the community on the plans for the game's features rollout over the next four months. To sum up the huge list: Early May: The addition of oceans, cave networks, Player Studio, and some quick fixes to help new players catch up such as a progression path diagram and the placement of basic crafting tables at the Hub. Late May: The team will add customer service tools, "crafting 2.0," treasure chests (and loot!), voice chat, underwater effects, map improvements, a minimap, and lots more music from Jeremy Soule. June: June will see a personal interface for Player Studio put in, the advent of glass and water as a building material, a revamp to the claim system, improved character creation, resource swapping, a death system, shields, recipe books, achievements, "chat 2.0," the fog of war on the map, and a "surprise feature." July: By the middle of summer, Landmark will introduce ensemble outfit pieces, the combat system, pathing, craftable abilities, physics, monsters, SOEmote, and bodies of water other than oceans. August: The last month on the blueprint will contain (for now) building tool refinements, mounts, and dynamic water.
Breakfast Topic: The many mysteries of loot drops
Looting monsters in World of Warcraft can be an experience filled with mystery. Surely you've had the quest where you're sent off to collect bear paws or the like where you only get one paw per bear -- or even less? Where do all of those paws go? Or perhaps you've killed a bat who dropped a lockbox, leaving you to wonder what was he keeping in it and how he even got into it. What about the creatures of Azeroth who carry around spare pairs of pants or plate armor? If you're a leatherworker, you've probably occasionally picked up some intestines along with the leather you skinned -- and find gold inside. Yuck. And let's not even get started on the raid bosses of Azeroth who apparently lug around whole chests of loot. (And where was Garrosh hiding all of those heirlooms?) The game is full of loot conundrums, so today why not tell us yours? What's the most oddball loot you've acquired -- or haven't acquired -- in the game?
Joystiq Streams Special: Diablo 3 and Loot 2.0 madness [UPDATE: Relive the stream!]
Today's the day, Diablo 3. This particular Wednesday is when you blossom into the game that so very many people wanted you to be when you came out back in 2012. Today, you get Loot 2.0. Maybe claiming that Loot 2.0 is the day that Diablo 3 comes of age is an exaggeration, but the massive update Blizzard delivered to its famous dungeon crawling game today is certainly the most significant update yet. From here on out, "Smart Drop" will make it far easier for players to get their mitts on armor, weapons, and other rare loot specific to their character type, negating the need for the game's divisive auction houses in the process. To check out Loot 2.0, Alexander Sliwinski (@Sliwinski) and Richard Mitchell (@TheRichardM) dive into its infernal guts to check out the changes. This crew reflects a variety of different experience levels. Richard has yet to play the PC version of the game. Alexander, meanwhile, has never played Diablo 3 at all. It's all happening on the Joystiq Twitch channel at 4PM EST. Come and hang out with us. [Images: Blizzard]
Flameseeker Chronicles: Meeting fun halfway in Guild Wars 2
Lion's Arch is gone. What's left of our city is rubble and fire and the echoing screams of terrified survivors. The day Scarlet Briar's army attacked dawned clear and mild; by the end the sky was choked with smoke, poison, and the silhouette of Scarlet's massive drill ship. Thousands of people died, are dying, and will continue to die -- all we can do for now is to try to save as many as we can. Escape From Lion's Arch is a truly impressive piece of storytelling and atmospheric set design, and I found it immediately comparable to similar missions in games like BioWare's Mass Effect series. I've never really played anything like it in an MMO, and I think ArenaNet has done a wonderful job of capturing the feeling of a city under attack. It's been a bittersweet time for fans of Guild Wars 2; as I discussed last week, roleplayers have responded to the release with a flurry of creative activity, and the general consensus seems to be that the story, dialogue, atmosphere and artwork are all excellent -- if only we weren't forced to mindlessly farm for loot! Wait, we're what?
Are you happy with the bonus roll system? Blizzard is pretty happy.
The bonus roll system is a personal loot feature introduced in Mists of Pandaria which gives you extra chances at loot on the raid bosses of your choice. Most people have a love/hate relationship with it, myself included. We don't know the exact numbers, but it appears the chance of loot is roughly 15% in current content (usually made higher in previous tiers). There are other variables behind the scenes which affect this drop chance, such as the bad luck streak protection, but we do not know the exact math behind it. When asked on Twitter, Watcher replied that they're happy with the bonus roll system and it will most likely be making a return in Warlords of Draenor. @Gurzog @Celestalon That's the plan. We're pretty happy with how the bonus roll system has worked out. - Watcher (@WatcherDev) January 24, 2014 I'm happy it's sticking around. Bonus rolls have gotten me out of some pretty bad loot dry spells. If I could change one thing about them going forward, it would be the lesser charm conversion system. Either have them acquired in a different manner, or make the charms useful for something else. Of course, this is coming from someone sitting on a three year supply of lesser charms. I've seen other player suggestions such as having the option to use multiple rolls on a single kill, or a smarter system which doesn't give you loot you already own. Are you happy with the bonus roll system or would you like to see some changes?
The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's Crystal Tower
Let me be up front with you, dear readers: The Crystal Tower in Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most well-designed dungeons I have had the pleasure of playing through, ever. Not just "in Final Fantasy XIV" but anywhere, ever. It's fun, it's clever, it's clean, it's engaging, it's freaking spectacular. If not for one minor wrinkle, it'd be a nearly unambiguously perfect bit of bliss. But I'll cover that part later; the important point is that right off the bat, this dungeons is something that I consider absolutely stellar. Longtime readers will also know that large group content is generally not my thing. I dislike a big raiding endgame, and I'm not a fan of the style of play, so the idea that my current favorite dungeon in the game is a 24-man rush through the tower probably seems a bit odd. So let's talk about boss strategies, progress through the tower, and the one blemish on what is otherwise unambiguously great.
EVE Evolved: Designing EVE Onland, part 1
When I'm not playing or writing about EVE Online, I can usually be found huddled over my computer typing lines of code into a compiler and chipping away at bugs that make varying degrees of sense. Designing my own hardcore space game is a really fun challenge and very fulfilling work, but I have a dirty little game dev secret: I've actually always wanted to make a fantasy game. While the budget and personnel required to take on a project the scale of an MMO remain quite far outside my grasp for the moment, it's still fun to think about how I might design such a game if the opportunity arose. The MMO genre seems to be heading for a sandbox revolution this year, and there's no bigger sandbox than EVE Online, but could all of EVE's gameplay translate to a fantasy game? EVE is probably the most atypical MMO out there, maintaining a subscription-based single-shard PvP sandbox in a genre that's typically headed in the exact opposite direction. There are several new sci-fi sandboxes on the way that may or may not qualify as massively multiplayer titles, but the vast majority of MMO gamers still prefer to keep their feet on the ground in fantasy lands. I often find myself wondering how much of EVE Online's core gameplay is possible only because of its setting -- and how much could actually be applied to a fantasy MMO. Not only should it be possible to adapt most of what makes EVE great to a modern land-based game, but many of the mechanics sandbox gamers now attribute almost solely to EVE actually started life in classic fantasy MMOs like Ultima Online. In this week's unusual EVE Evolved, I'd like to start a game design thought experiment as I delve into the hypothetical world of EVE Onland.
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot traps you for hours of fun
It might sound like a bad thing, but my favorite part of playing Ubisoft's The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is logging into the game. I just love it when I get past the loading screen that warns "closed beta" to see who has attacked my castle and how the attackers fared during the attempt. Usually they have just blown past my defenses and humiliated me, but thanks to a wonderful replay feature, I can see exactly where my castle is at its weakest and can adjust accordingly. Every player in the game gets a castle like mine. They're all floating in the sky, chock-full of riches that are up for grabs as long as the attacking player can get past the castle's defenses. The gameplay is nothing really new. We have been playing castle defense or action-based puzzlers for a long time, but The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot delivers everything in such a polished, unique-looking package that it gets props for being unique. There's much more to the game, but you'll have to get past my glue traps to read the details!
MMO Mechanics: Three fair ways to distribute loot
I mentioned last week that players throw their precious characters into the MMO meat grinder in the pursuit of higher levels, new achievements, or shinier gear. We gladly jump on the seemingly endless PvE treadmill, cranking up the speed with each new patch in an attempt to catch the dangling carrot of character perfection. Of course, we don't just punish ourselves like this to say we overcame some previously impossible challenge; there's shiny new loot to be had! The best booty usually comes from completing group activities like dungeons and raids, but not everyone can agree on how to share the spoils of joint pursuits. Several different loot distribution methods have been devised over the years to solve the problem of fairly distributing the swag, with most methods starting life as player-made agreements that weren't officially supported by hard-coded game mechanics. Players have long since rolled for gear or took turns to claim items round-robin style, leading developers to implement the most popular methods as actual game mechanics to avoid ninja-looting and then the inevitable public pity parties associated with player-led arbitration. In this edition of MMO Mechanics, I'll break down three of the most equitable loot distribution systems used in MMOs today and look at why this age-old problem doesn't have a one-size-fits-all solution.
Potentials and pitfalls of Warlords of Draenor's proposed gearing system
Not long ago Blizzard posted a long and detailed post about the gearing system that they are planning on implementing in Warlords of Draenor. Many aspects of it represent significant departures from what we're currently familiar with, particularly the ability of primary stats to morph with class and spec, the removal of spirit from all but non-armor pieces, and the addition of the randomized tertiary stat system (along with chances for sockets and a higher ilevel). As a result, there has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and debate about how the new system will work, and ways in which it may or may not be an improvement over the status quo. I personally am excited for the new gearing system, and I'm eager to see how it will work out. I think there's a great deal of potential in it. While we can probably envision endless possibilities as to how the new system will affect gameplay, two major aspects of the change jump out at me in particular: It's extremely friendly to hybrids It's extremely unfriendly to min-max optimization The latter refers to the fact that whether the gear has a socket, a tertiary stat, or a higher ilevel is determined by chance and there is no guarantee that a given piece of gear will have any of those things. I think there are both good and bad sides to be had here, so let's look at them in a bit more depth.
Officers' Quarters: Officers of Draenor
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. BlizzCon 2013 gave us a glimpse into WoW's future. As officers, it's never too early to plan and adjust for the evolution of the game. Let's take a look at the some of the issues that could affect your guild next year. No new perks It appears that guilds will remain capped at level 25, which also means no new perks. In the systems panel, Blizzard said that they don't see the point of piling on perks. They said, "The system accomplished what we wanted it to accomplish." That's good news, in a way, for smaller guilds or people who plan to start new guilds in the future. For those of us who hoped for more, it's a bit disappointing.
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
The Mog Log: Straight on down the line of Final Fantasy XIV's endgame
Well, what do you know. Just before I was going to write a column about Final Fantasy XIV's endgame, the development changed the entire thing. And with such a little change, too. Before Tuesday, the endgame was pretty simple. You had two main instances to worry about and three primals, one of which was only really relevant for a single quest. If you were decked out from all that, you had another challenge to undertake. The actual makeup hasn't changed since Tuesday, but which instances matter and how they're run has, since you now have two ways of getting those all-important Mythology tomestones. For some of you reading, this is all stuff you don't even need to worry about yet. For others, it's the right here and right now that you deal with on a daily basis. So let's look at what the endgame is, what it was, and why I find myself oddly satisfied with it despite the overall sparse landscape.
TERA's newest update brings Halloween event, box refinements, and achievements
Halloween is almost here, if you count half a month away as "almost," and TERA is ready to go with its Halloween event starting on October 17th. That means opening up both a low-level and high-level dungeon as well as adding new ways to earn candy for everyone. It also adds new achievements... along with 182 other new achievements added in the same patch, more rewards for clearing achievements, and improvements to the achievement UI. Yes, there's more to this patch than just pumpkins and ghosts. The update also has changed the loot distribution of strongboxes, both in terms of what's in the boxes and where you can pick them up. Older types have been retired, and new types have been added with a somewhat smoother distribution of items. Add to that some class balance updates and an assortment of bugfixes, and there's plenty for all TERA players to be happy about aside from the upcoming event. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Shoot things in Borderlands 2 for a chance at winning loot, cash prizes
Borderlands 2's upcoming Loot Hunt competition will give you a shot at earning in-game and real-life prizes as you mow down the inhabitants of Pandora. Once players register at the event's site, they can enter themselves in the raffle by hunting Daily Targets within the game starting on October 11. The prize pool will include loot chests filled with Nvidia Shield and Falcon Northwest Tiki PC combos, Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti GFX cards, PlayStation Vitas with copies of Borderlands 2 Vita (once it's released), and lifetime passes to everything 2K ever has and will put out on Steam. One player will also win $50,000 in cash while four others earn scaled amounts from a second pool of $50,000. If you don't win a physical prize, you'll still have a collective chance with other players at "unique in-game loot" by completing the loot hunt's Community Goals. The event's site describes these as daily campaigns of genocide against "a special type of enemy with that day's unique gun." If enough are slaughtered in the name of personal benefit, those involved will earn a special gun at the end of the week. Only players in the US are eligible for the physical rewards, but the in-game rewards will be available to vault hunters worldwide.
Breakfast Topic: Do you contribute to your favorite WoW database site?
You know that site you use every day to learn about quests and where things drop? All of that data -- who drops what, the percentages, the map locations -- comes from players who take the time to collect it and contribute. The more people who contribute, the more accurate the data. These lightweight addons collect the pertinent information in the background and upload when you exit the game. The Wowhead Client will let you collect data for Wowhead and upload it at your convenience The WoWDB Profiler addon works in conjunction with the Curse Client to contribute to WoWDB %Poll-84874%
Blood Pact: 'Lock loot in Siege of Orgrimmar
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill links all the things, all the time. Patch week with a new raid tier? It's loot list time. You know the drill. Just like last time, I'm going to visit the loot for each boss, perhaps saying a word or two, just so you know what's there when you spend a coin on a bonus roll.
