slippery-slope
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Turbine: LotRO cash shop stat armor 'creates solutions for players'
It's been an interesting week for Turbine, and the development firm has spent some of it doing damage control resulting from its decision to sell stat gear in its Lord of the Rings Online cash shop. As we reported last Friday, the company has reversed course, first by selling stat tomes and PvMP gear, and now with new low-level stat armor pieces. Turbine's Adam Mersky tells Gamefront that this is a matter of the firm looking out for its customers. "This is us coming up with solutions to problems players are reporting to us. We're trying to create solutions for players," he says, before stating that Turbine is "not averse to puling things off the store if they don't work." What about the eventual sale of high-level stat gear? Mersky says Turbine has "no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store."
Warhammer Online explains the nuances of the Underdog System
One of the biggest problems you face when designing any PvP-focused game is the trouble of slippery slope -- in brief, the problem that losing makes it easier for you to continue losing and even harder to start winning. A game like Warhammer Online that's sold on the strength of fighting other players needs to be especially vigilant, hence the Underdog System rolled out with the game's most recent patch. It promises to make it easier for the losing side to regain their footing -- but that leads to the obvious question of how it will implement the change. A new developer diary on the official site explains the system in slightly more detail, helping to shed light on the method and implementation. Rather than being a straight buff to the players on one side or the other, the system revolves around making the overall objectives easier or harder based on win streaks. The underdog will have more time to capture objectives and fewer control points required to obtain victory, while the top dog will have less time to capture, more control points to capture, and a shorter duration of control. The diary also gives some example of the system in action, something that should be all but required reading for every Warhammer Online player. The system won't fix everything, but it certainly will make the game's PvP more lively and less prone to one side or the other having a consistent edge.
