group dynamics
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A Robot Swarm descends on NYC's Museum of Math
Roboticist-in-residence James McLurkin offered an advanced preview of his Robot Swarm at NYC's Museum of Mathematics this week. The presentation detailed the background and programming concepts of these sensor- and speaker-laden bots -- which have a habit of spitting out 8-bit-style tunes while they work. The digital creatures exhibit group behaviors much like ants and bees, working together to map out their surroundings and communicate with each other -- and there's a definite hierarchy to their organization. The Robot Swarm exhibit will be open to the public when it's completed later this year and will be displayed beneath a transparent floor so you can watch the action happen from your own god-like perspective. Head on down to the gallery for a closer look at how the Robot Swarm will organize itself when the robopocalypse finally arrives.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's tower flower power hour
I'm super into the idea of open-world endgame zones, which is admittedly strange because my experience with them hasn't been great. They usually involve a lot of dying in terrible places, kill-stealing, and people tripping over one another in a way that creates centuries-long mutual hatreds. Guild Wars 2's Tower of Nightmares zone manages to mostly avoid the latter two by virtue of ArenaNet's core game design choices, but the first appears to be a defining feature of the content. If you haven't yet found yourself pushing up toxic daisies while Scarlet's minions casually play board games on your corpse, you haven't... uh... lived. It's pretty awesome. That might sound strange, but when everything comes together the tower plays like a big, magnificent dungeon where parties can form on the fly. It follows, then, that it's a lot less painful when approached as a dungeon rather than as a zone where the goal is to race to the instance at the end.
The Secret World announces group and raid sizes
As you may have heard, The Secret World gathers up modern-day legends and conspiracy theories and asks, "What if they were all true?" Of course, if these stories were true, then there would have to be a group of people preventing the world from crashing down in utter chaos, right? The Secret World has three such groups, in fact: the Illuminati, the Templars, and the Dragon. That's the big picture, but what about smaller groups? In an interview with The Electric Playground, Lead Content Designer Joel Bylos explains the general idea behind the group dynamics: We really feel that an MMO is a shared experience, right? It's very important that people work together to solve these problems. That's the greatest sort of feeling of achievement: when you work together with other people to overcome something. He goes on to say that it may be possible for players with similar builds to actually be viable even when they're grouped together. He specifically mentioned a group of all tanks' being able to tackle a dungeon if they all had a self heal. But how many players are actually in groups? Bylos says five, and raid groups are 10. No more worrying about finding those other 30 people you would need for those 40-man dungeons, thank goodness!
Wings Over Atreia: What's in it for me?
That does it. No more Ms. Nice Wings. This time I am just going to unleash! Let my rant all hang out. Admittedly, I am not normally one to complain; I can see the good in most every situation, and I can roll with the punches like it's an Olympic event. But even my feathers get ruffled sometimes. It's true! And sometimes you just can't bite your tongue anymore or all you will have is a very sore tongue. Now I know I am not a rant-master like Jef, but even fledgling ranters must begin somewhere. And this week, I found just such a place: immature, self-serving, can't-pull-their-thumbs-outta-their-ears-unless-there-is-something-in-it-for-them-gamers in Aion. You know the type -- those who think the world revolves around them. Those whose spoiled-rotten antics ruin groups and legions alike and who are the reason why many a block list is so full. They without whom drama would die a quick death and be a forgotten plague. They're the bane of chat channels everywhere -- they are the trolls. Throw yourself past the cut for a look at some recent Aion tantrums and sure-fire ways to minimize the effects of blatant immaturity. Careful, though -- I cannot be held responsible for any resemblance to gamers near you.
New details emerge on SWTOR's healing and space components
So it looks like those lucky buggers over at IGN sat down with a couple Star Wars: The Old Republic developers and pelted them with as many questions from the community as possible. The results have made our day much brighter, and we're sure yours will benefit in much the same way.While a lot of the questions were deflected in one way or another -- as this is a game that's probably not coming out for a while -- some tiny new pieces of information did surface. For instance, much of the community has been wondering about healing. Will the game go with the "Holy Trinity" or is something else planned? The answer appears to be a little bit of both. It sounds as though each class has the opportunity to invest resources into healing abilities. Although, BioWare is quick to point out that parties will definitely want some "healers" in higher-level situations.Insofar as space combat is concerned, it appears that BioWare isn't talking about it, yet. Yes, they didn't flat out deny its existence in the game nor did they give confirmation, so for now we'll have to wait. A large part of the interview merely confirms things we've already known or suspected. Planets will have multiple zones, PvP is important to the team, customization will be very important and all the stuff you'd expect from a game this immense.
Studying WoWcology, where psychology and WoW meet
I've been meaning to write about this WoWcology blog for a few days now, but there's just so much there -- reader Skeuk is guilded up with a PhD in Psychology, who's writing not only about the guild's day to day battles, but also about how the deeper tenets of psychology can be seen in our Azerothian gameplay. This post about group dynamics is extremely interesting -- if you've ever suffered through some bad PuGs in your time, you can see the different stages of group development, and you can probably even figure out where your PuG fizzled out in the "storming" stage or made it all the way through to the "performing" part of the cycle. Fascinating stuff, for sure.Unfortunately, posts aren't coming too often, and it seems like Dr. Amalea -- who for some reason refers to himself in the third person at times -- understandably has other things to do besides keeping a blog about World of Warcraft and psychology. But maybe if we send them a little traffic, we can convince him to keep it up regularly, as what's there now makes for some really interesting reading. It's really interesting that a lot of the stuff we're dealing with the game now -- forming PuGs, guild drama, even loot distribution, has all been studied by psychologists for years and years before World of Warcraft ever existed.
To Merge, Or Not To Merge?
I have never been a part of a successful guild merger. I have been involved in three, and in each case the downfall of the guild has been imminent. Why is it that when two (or more) groups try to combine their resources and members, they fail most of the time? 1. A guild merger is often a symptom of deeper problems within one or both of the guilds. Guilds with no problems a far less likely to be interested in mergers than those with lots of discontent among their members. 2. Officers don't like to give up respect and privilege. Guild officers earn respect from members. That’s why they are officers. In a guild merger, some officers are bound to get demoted, and those who aren’t have to earn the respect of a whole new group of members. That inevitably leads to friction within the larger group. 3. Play styles and rules are bound to be different. Loot rules…the bane of a guild’s serenity. Even if members aren’t thrilled with the loot rules that a guild uses, they learn to deal with them. If a new group comes in and has a different way of determining looting, who gets to lead and go on raids, or the way that promotion within the guild structure is handled, it leads to accusations of favoritism. conclusions after the jump.
