What is ArcheAge? (part 2)

Previous article: What is the Labor system and how Gathering & Crafting works

Last time we talked about how the Labor System combined with Gathering and Crafting, now we are going to take a glimpse at how Construction works in ArcheAge works as it is one of the most anticipated features in the game and the one one of the first things that was shown as the game was reviled to the community.

In ArcheAge is it possible to construct so many things, from several types of buildings to your own personal ship for naval warfare, this is the first feature i saw in this game several years ago that opened my eyes to the possibilities that it will bring to the game world, i will leave you first in a magical journey with this fantastic video that shows what amazing things can be achieved with this system and get a general idea how it works.

House Building
First of all we can't just build anywhere there are limited areas for construction to avoid blocking roads and such, so we need to attain a plot a land which is gather large, after that you go into building mode where you can rotate and place your selected house anywhere withing your land, but the house won't just pop out, you start with the house's foundation and you will have to gather the materials and have the necessary Labor Power to build it, how you will get the Labor power is up to you, use your guild members, pay some players or rent some NPCs it's your choice, eventually you can build walls to protect your town and gain money from taxes from both local merchants and players living within your domain.

Naval Construction
In ArcheAge it is also possible to build ships for your guild which can be used for several things, use them to explore the world, to conquer the sea or hunt sea monsters. To build a ship you first need to build a shipyard, for that you go to the harbor and select an area where it will be built and once its complete you can start constructing your ship, just like the house building you need materials and Labor Power.

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What is ArcheAge? (part 1)

The first time i read about ArcheAge i was intrigued because i never heard of it before however, it had such amazing unique features that i never saw in any other mmo, it simply blew my mind how an unknown company could come out with such high quality game.

The reasons why its not that well known in the gaming community its because it's being developed by a Korean company(XLGames) and the lack of marketing, which might be a good thing because since the game isn't ready yet and they should use their funds for development instead.

ArcheAge is a Sand-Box MMO, a game that where the world evolves by the players hands by changing and interacting with the environment, which leads us to the Crafting and Gathering but in order to fully understand how it works we must first look at the Labor system.

Labor Power
There are 3 main stats in the game, Health Points, Mana Points and Labor Points, the last is the it is the main source for production, construction, crafting and gathering as well as certain entertainments for those who want to use them in social activities such as going to a party.

The Labor Points regenerate slowly over time, according to some beta-testers its about 1 point every 10 min and you will receive them whether you are online or offline up to limit which in the beta was 100 points, meaning it will take about 17 hours fill the bar. The Rate of use however is much higher as it depends on what exactly are you trying to do, crafting a simple item for example costs 1 LP but mining a node can cost 2 or 3 LP depending one the difficulty of what you are mining.

It is also possible to pay other players for their Labor or rent NPC's to use as labor for your constructions, so needless to say that building with a guild is far more effective.

Crafting and Gathering
Most gathering nodes have several stages each will give a different amount of material or a diferent one entirely, for example:

• an ore node has 3 stages a fresh unbroken stone, broken stone with ore showing, and broken stone with minerals showing, the stages will give you stone, metal and crystals respectively and the second and third stages may not spawn at all, also since the Labor Points are somewhat scarce there is no point in wasting it in something you have no use for unless you think it maybe profitable if you sell it.
• a tree will give a number of logs according to its size, so its better to chop down a big tree and let the smaller one grow(yes trees grow)

 The number of gathering materials is very varied, you can grow you own herb garden, forest, crops, you can pick apples... and the list goes on.
There are no Crafting professions, meaning you can craft what ever you want providing you have the recipe and the materials, just go to the correct crafting tool(anvil, mannequin, etc...).

Next on Part 2: How House and Naval contruction works

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New Design!

Hey guys, i have been doing some changes to the blog over the past 24h and this was the final result, i really enjoy how it turned how and need a lot of tweaking to get it work properly but it was worth it.

The main reason for the changes are apart from the obvious awesome look, its now much more organized as you can browse the posts by their category and the search will now automatically search and show what you are looking for within this website.

Hope you enjoy it as much as i do.

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Global Agenda: Recursive Colony

  Recursive Colony is the first large expansion of the third person shooter Global Agenda since it became free to play. The theme of this expansion is an invasion of a horde of self-replicating robots that is menacing the player Domes them selves, so it is up to you to stop it reclaim peace within the Domes once again.

   From what i see it adds some new content both for PvE and PvP, some much requested features like the ability to select a new character without disconnecting and some other main features such as:

• New Open Zone with several instanced missions, quest chains, mid-high level content, and social spaces
• New enemies – including world bosses and instanced mission bosses
• Daily Repeatable Quests – for solo agents and teams. Some quests take place in zones, while others send teams into Recursive Colony hive nodes and ruins. These quests include new 4-man defense Raid missions – now available to smaller groups (1-4) at lower levels (20+)
• New Dyes, Flair, and Trails – rewards for winning missions, completing daily quests, rare bot drops and achievements
• New Pets – new pets available as rewards and crafted items.
• New Blueprints – for consumables and mods
• Easier crafting – components now within the zone, to help with leveling crafting skills
• New PvP Map – Push Dust will be entering the Merc queue from Beta
• New PvP Acquisition/CTR Map – Colony Caverns will be entering the Beta Queue
• Revamped Intro Missions – Tutorials now include class-specific elements to help train new players
• Some quests now affect the state of the world (example – Brownouts in Dome City…)
• Ability to transfer between different Open Zone instances (and VR Arena)
• Open Zone cross-instance chat channels
• Disconnect to Character Select Screen without re-login
• Improved Vendor Item Previewing

I will try the new content soon, hope to see you in-game!

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Star Wars: TOR, The Alderaan Warzone

  The Alderaan warzone - like the name implies is a pvp instanced area, just like in any other MMO but it has a BioWare touch to it, by that i mean that like other of their games it has a more theatrical feeling to it but with the help from the team from Warhammer Online it still feels like a competitive pvp match.

  On to explaining why... the players start the match in a one of two large dropships one for the Republic and one for the Empire,  the objective is to secure the map by taking control of its defenses which are some cannons that are spread around the map which will fire upon the enemy dropship thus eventually destroying it, the central cannon is the largest one meaning the one that will do most damage so its where most of the action will be focused at.

  There is no "respawn timer", instead you just wait for several seconds while your character returns to the fight which is done by speeder bike thus adding a cinematic feel to the game. In the end if you want to break the game into basics its just the typical capture and hold battleground but those elements are nicely hidden making it look like something new.

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Micro-transaction games growing stronger!

  A multiplayer online games market data that tracks both PC massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and multiplayer online games (MOGs) that have a charged service this includes subscription and micro-transaction payments, has revealed that the subscription sector has suffered a heavy decline in 2010 while the micro-transaction type grew ever strongly.

  With this information  IHS Screen Digest expects the MMOG/MOG segment to grow from $2.7 billion in 2010 to $3.1 billion by 2015 due to the growth driven by microtransaction-based services in both the MMOG and MOG sub-segments.
Read the full article Here.

  This is most likely either due to the economic crisis world-wide as players try to go to free to play games or due to the fact that free to play games no longer have that "cheap" feeling and are starting to have as much quality as the the subscription games.

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Dead Island

 If i could put the game into a small sentence it would be "a world with quests like Fallout 3 with the weapon customization of Dead Rising combined with the first person feel and co-op of Left 4 Dead", however this would not be fair as the game brings many other things that makes it entertaining.

You start your journey with a cut-scene of this huge party in a tropical resort and end up drunk in your hotel bed without a clue that a huge zombie outbreak as set it self in the island, as you go on you will find survivors all around the island that require your assistance to get anything from food and water to parts to help fixing cars.

The combat is fun specially due to the variety of weapons(and their modifications), their random stats and the way they interact with your target, simply put blunt weapons break bones and bladed ones sever limbs... hint, this is specially useful for the large zombies that you can't knock-down.

So if you like survival games, if you love to transform your weapons and if you love kicking zombies in the head ,then this game has much to offer for you and for a long time as it will give you over 30 hours of co-op alone.

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Guild Wars 2: skill bar

 We all know that GW2 is an action-type mmo and one of the aspect that was influenced was the skill bar, so today i am going to explain in detail how the it works as it is quite distinct from other games of the same genre.

 As we can see in the image above there a total of 10 skill slots divided in two types, basically the first 5 on the left are based on what weapon you currently have equipped and the last 5 are entirely up to the player, each of this two types is sub-divided into some specific skill types

Weapon skills

 This five slots are directly linked to your class and weapon type, meaning a ranger and a warrior with a bow will have a completely unique set weapon skills suited to their play-style.
Another thing that changes this five slots is which weapon you have in each hand, this is because you can use a large two-handed or used two one-handed weapons, simply put the first 3 slot are for main-hand and the other 2 are for the off-hand.

Profession skills 
 This set of 5 slots entirely customizable are sub-divided as follows, first one is a dedicated healing skill meaning you will always have 1 out of several abilities that will add to your survivability, the next three are utility skills which can be anything from buff to traps depending on your class and the last one is the elite skill that is powerful ability with a larger cool-down period.

 Skills can only be customized while out off combat you can however alternate between your two "weapon sets" while in-combat allowing your to be more versatile.
Some professions also have additional skill/buff/stances as their class mechanic as it can be seen in the first image above the weapon skills.

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The Secret World

 

Many might not know this title but it has some strong roots, The Secret World is a new upcoming MMO from the creator of Age of Conan and The Longest Journey. It's purpose is to be distinct from your typical game as its neither futuristic nor it is the usual fantasy type, it in fact takes place in today's modern times but with a slight twist of the occult or has game Director Ragnar Tornquist describes it, "a world of contemporary dark fantasy".

In The Secret World the way players are introduced into the world is unique, you don't start in some remote location killing a few animals for some copper in fact you start the game as a regular person in one of 3 cities(New York, London or Seoul) going about doing typical day-by--day errands, but soon you start to see that some things are wrong and that those old frightening tales that you heard as a child are actually real as you dive into the occult.

 

One of the most impressive things about this game is that its lore is based in myths that we have all heard about, according to Ragnar Tornquist "it goes back 100 million years" from the Garden of Eden to Pandora's Box or even the Knights Templar.

Other interesting things about the game is that it will feature 3 opposing factions, the Illuminati, the Templars and the Dragon which i will talk about in another post and the lack of the typical experience bar in the character development.

I believe this game will be a breath of fresh air in this overcrowded gaming genre and i am looking forward to checking it in more detail!

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What is "skill" in the gamers world?

I think most players have of been perverting the idea of "skill" to the point that now it is completely misinterpreted, the true meaning of "skill" is knowing how/when to do a certain action and will it influence the battle in order to achieve the desired outcome(victory).

Most players have forgotten how small action have a big impact in the gameplay and that shows skill, things such as:

• knowing that you should run out of Range/Line-Of-Sight.
• recognizing when to destroy an object so your target can not use it to break LOS.
• knowing that a particular route can be used to attack/flee.
• correctly place a ground effect such as a firewall in a place where it will be the most effective(specially while in combat).
• using skills that have bonus when target is in a certain position/state.
• positioning one self in a fight in order to avoid damage or to benefit from a boost.

Each of these small things seam obvious to most experienced players but it is easy to forget that they are examples of "skill" on their own, obviously doing one or two of them does not make one a "skilled player"... for that we need be able to do all of those and much more, however we should not dismiss the less experienced players who understand how to do them.

Becoming a "skilled player" is a long journey, one that even the best players had to partake as well, so next time you see some one that may not be as good as you instead of ridiculing his efforts, try to encourage him to become a better player... who knows it may very well be a start of a great friendship.

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