I know that I've been extremely bad about posting lately. And honestly, I would like to post more but between family and work deadlines I spend the little free time I have playing videogames to unwind a bit.
To give you an idea of what takes up my time:
Work about 50+ hours a week at the moment to hit deadlines.
Play Marvel War of Heroes
Play Rage of Bahamut
Play a Mobile Game in Development
Play a New Mobile Game every week - Currently breaking down four different mobile games and what makes them successful. Have also tried ayakashi, Immortalis, Arcane Empire, Galaxy Empire, D.O.T. Pantheon of Legends, KaW. Etc.
Recently I've played: Vindictus, Dragon Nest, Atlantica, SMITE, Tera Rising, Path of Exile, Aion, C9, Allods, Raiderz, League of Legends, Pirates 101, Firefall. And that's just the tip. Each time I play these I generally write a review of it.
Write other articles
Family Time
Watch a couple movies
So, sometimes I get a little burnt out. Obviously updating my best decks lists would be helpful, but it's also the most boring and asinine task on the site. Especially considering that new cards are releasing so fast that the data immediately goes out of date.
But, how often do I need to tell people how to do well in Holy Wars? Or how often do I need to tell people if they want to do well in an event they need to find a way to get event cards? If they had truly new event I would be excited and write all about it.
Now, I could write a cost benefit analysis one paying players vs non paying players. That's the only recommendation that's come recently that intrigues me, but since I don't pay it would be pure speculation. With the current economy though I'm not quite sure why somebody would pay.
Now, somebody might say "Well, if you had time to write this, you could have written about something more insightful." This doesn't take a lot of energy to write and = I think it's worth letting people know that I still look at and read the site and the only reason I'm not posting as often is because Rage hasn't really been doing anything worth writing about.
So, in an effort to post more often, I'm definitely going to post about things that may not be directly related to Rage of Bahamut but do relate to games. Starting Monday and going forward, I'm going to be posting the following:
A look at the Mobile Game Pirate Maidens - Focusing on how the concept made me laugh my ass off.
A post wondering what in the world is the appeal of farming games
The following week:
Hopefully Rage does something noteworthy, and if they don't a list of noteworthy things they should consider doing.
A rant about girl gamers.
The following week: I haven't thought this far ahead.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
What can I say about Holy Wars?
So, I was going to do a Holy War post before the war, but Honestly...what can I say that I haven't already said during previous Holy Wars?
By now most people know that defense leaders are pretty much useless against the power of chains and shingeki. Obviously you should try to gain points in every battle for medals. You should coordinate for maybe one mammoth war a day rather than burn your members out on constant wars.
There just is really only so much I can say about Holy Wars. They have blatantly become who can spend the most HP. And before people say they always have been...they didn't always feel like that.
They felt more like you had to pick the right player to attack (because some you could beat and some you couldn't). They felt like having everybody use the same card confused the enemy. It felt like defense/attack leaders served a purpose.
I can tell you right now there are orders out there considering doing away with def/atk leaders because they only serve to offer a point bonus.
Overall, I just don't really have a lot to say about current HW, so I'm sorry.
Return Defense leaders to their previous position. They are defenders and should act as such. Or if you want other players to remain attackable. Give all players a 50% boost to defense while a defense leader is active. This will make people think again about who they attack and bring some glory back to the defense leader.
Increase wall health. Lets be honest, walls are too easy and meaningless in their current form. If that had about 5-6x the health though, they would serve more of a purpose and breaking them down would seem more of an accomplishment.
Remove the ability to burn tons of HP in a single attack. It makes it fell like war is about spending HP and it should feel about which team is better built. I understand that HP should be apart of it, but the main reasons HW don't seem worth the trouble is because of the heavy HP expenditures.
Finally, stop trying to design an event on how you can make more money. You may make more money from some players, but you lose players. And although you may not value those players who don't spend money, if one of your paying players is friends with them, you're likely to lose them.
Lets simplify that thought that for you:
Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer
So, non payers 2, 3, and four leave. They find a new non Rage/Mobage game. They are still good friends in LINE with the two Payers and say 'hey, we're having a blast with this new game'. Payer tries it and says, damn, screw mobage, I'm playing this.
That's my post/rant for this week.
By now most people know that defense leaders are pretty much useless against the power of chains and shingeki. Obviously you should try to gain points in every battle for medals. You should coordinate for maybe one mammoth war a day rather than burn your members out on constant wars.
There just is really only so much I can say about Holy Wars. They have blatantly become who can spend the most HP. And before people say they always have been...they didn't always feel like that.
They felt more like you had to pick the right player to attack (because some you could beat and some you couldn't). They felt like having everybody use the same card confused the enemy. It felt like defense/attack leaders served a purpose.
I can tell you right now there are orders out there considering doing away with def/atk leaders because they only serve to offer a point bonus.
Overall, I just don't really have a lot to say about current HW, so I'm sorry.
So, instead, I'll post how I would fix HW in Rage of Bahamut:
The idea of players having a sort of super saiyan mode (shingeki) is good. But I think that it should be accounted for each player and possibly tied to realm. Demons would get Attack Power Bonus, Gods could get a Defense Power Bonus, and Man could get a mixed bonus. When activated the player has five minutes of it. Move the ability from 'leader hits button, we zerg' to more of a 'player won 20 times, they got their limit break' type feel. The player would get a 50% bonus to HW points while in their 'Limit Break' mode. The potency of the ability could be increased every time you activated it. This moves away from those group buffs.Return Defense leaders to their previous position. They are defenders and should act as such. Or if you want other players to remain attackable. Give all players a 50% boost to defense while a defense leader is active. This will make people think again about who they attack and bring some glory back to the defense leader.
Increase wall health. Lets be honest, walls are too easy and meaningless in their current form. If that had about 5-6x the health though, they would serve more of a purpose and breaking them down would seem more of an accomplishment.
Remove the ability to burn tons of HP in a single attack. It makes it fell like war is about spending HP and it should feel about which team is better built. I understand that HP should be apart of it, but the main reasons HW don't seem worth the trouble is because of the heavy HP expenditures.
Finally, stop trying to design an event on how you can make more money. You may make more money from some players, but you lose players. And although you may not value those players who don't spend money, if one of your paying players is friends with them, you're likely to lose them.
Lets simplify that thought that for you:
Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer - Non Payer
So, non payers 2, 3, and four leave. They find a new non Rage/Mobage game. They are still good friends in LINE with the two Payers and say 'hey, we're having a blast with this new game'. Payer tries it and says, damn, screw mobage, I'm playing this.
That's my post/rant for this week.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Rage of Bahamut One Year Evolution
Rage of Bahamut has been out for right around a year now and I just wanted to write a small piece on the evolution of the game since it first launched so people can really think about the difference in the game now from what it was.
When Rage of Bahamut first came out there were no limitations on trading. Players could trade with anybody they wanted whether they were a random player or team member, and without a two week wait. The results of this was many high level players would look for new players and offer them Treasure High Rares of their alignment for the true High Rares the lowbies pulled.
Players would post in forums offering 2-3HP per Treasure High Rares claiming they were using them to skill up their cards when they were really using them to trade for High Rares worth 20-30HP each.
With no Bazaar players were stuck posting on forums and scouring forums for people who had the card they wanted or even to get the estimated value of cards. Every other post was somebody wondering if X trade or Y trade was fair.
Then players started to offer trades of 150 Rupies for a card somebody was selling for 150HP, and some people who were in a hurry or just not very aware would make the trade only to rage on forums.
Despite random exploitation and people creating 100s of accounts to get LCPs to trade with their main account...card values were steady with the least expensive HR being about 12-15HP and the highest valued ones hitting upwards of 45...65 when Claymore Maid and Apsara were released. For almost half a year the economy was stable despite random exploitation, which when you think about it...is pretty amazing.
Then Rage suffered from rampant server hacking and card theft after which they stopped trading for three weeks and implemented the Bazaar system. Lowbie players were so happy at first and started stammering off how great it was that cards would no longer have their 'inflated' values. And for weeks as prices dropped again and again players claimed they were leveling out to their 'actual values'.
Finally, we've dropped further than even I predicted with pretty much all HR being values at 1HP each. Amazing after months of stability amidst rampant exploitation that the prices could stand steady, but so quickly after Bazaar implementation they could fall so low.
So, After half a year of holding value and community growth, Rage of Bahamut implemented limited trading causing a severe economic collapse.
Instead, I'm going to talk about the evolution of the Raid Event:
Early Raid Events: Players Received cards for hitting the boss if he was taken down. Players received points based on their damage done. There were event cards that did additional damage as well as cards that blocked attacks.
Oldest Raid Events: Players could just hit bosses and gain cards for participating and gain HP by proceeding through quests or defeating a certain number of bosses. Players would pool their HP to purchase damage cards for the event bosses.
Old Raid Events: Raid Events stayed the same until after the economy changed. Players were given shards that could be traded in for chances at HP/CW/Cards. Players who had good raider cards could actually gather a lot of shards and profit pretty heavily. Players bought quite a few event cards, shared them with friends, and participated pretty heavily. Hard bosses appeared based on how many points you've accumulated. Overall, virtually the same as the earlier system except with shards that allow people to earn HP and CW instead of just R, HN, and N cards. This was a pretty good time.
Current Raid Events: Rage changed over their events to require players to have three event cards instead of the one most players were gathering. They also changed the system to require a resource that gave three attacks (To offset the 20 single card attacks people were doing). Fewer shards are given out overall. Players need to kill three weak bosses before they unlock the bosses they want. I hate this system. I know some people like it, but to me...it's hard enough to profit off of the event without having to invest in 3 Raider cards as well.
But most importantly...all the events had pretty much a two to three week break between them. It was astounding. We had time to recoup and build before the next event. It was a nice system.
When Rage released we might get a few new cards a month. It was astoundingly slow actually. Players would spend their time trading for cards like Ifrit and Nightmare knowing they had just enough power. When new cards were released it was normally the result of an event and players tried to get them to help through the event. When Claymore Maid and Apsara was released it was amazing.
Then a couple card packs came out and players were pretty psyched at the options. Then it seemed like a new card pack was coming out weekly...because they were. Now, it seems like every time I log on I have to deal with 30 seconds of load time while Rage tries to get my psyched about cards while I know ten new ones with be out next week.
Either way...card releases used to be special.
Trading:
When Rage of Bahamut first came out there were no limitations on trading. Players could trade with anybody they wanted whether they were a random player or team member, and without a two week wait. The results of this was many high level players would look for new players and offer them Treasure High Rares of their alignment for the true High Rares the lowbies pulled.
Players would post in forums offering 2-3HP per Treasure High Rares claiming they were using them to skill up their cards when they were really using them to trade for High Rares worth 20-30HP each.
With no Bazaar players were stuck posting on forums and scouring forums for people who had the card they wanted or even to get the estimated value of cards. Every other post was somebody wondering if X trade or Y trade was fair.
Then players started to offer trades of 150 Rupies for a card somebody was selling for 150HP, and some people who were in a hurry or just not very aware would make the trade only to rage on forums.
Despite random exploitation and people creating 100s of accounts to get LCPs to trade with their main account...card values were steady with the least expensive HR being about 12-15HP and the highest valued ones hitting upwards of 45...65 when Claymore Maid and Apsara were released. For almost half a year the economy was stable despite random exploitation, which when you think about it...is pretty amazing.
Then Rage suffered from rampant server hacking and card theft after which they stopped trading for three weeks and implemented the Bazaar system. Lowbie players were so happy at first and started stammering off how great it was that cards would no longer have their 'inflated' values. And for weeks as prices dropped again and again players claimed they were leveling out to their 'actual values'.
Finally, we've dropped further than even I predicted with pretty much all HR being values at 1HP each. Amazing after months of stability amidst rampant exploitation that the prices could stand steady, but so quickly after Bazaar implementation they could fall so low.
So, After half a year of holding value and community growth, Rage of Bahamut implemented limited trading causing a severe economic collapse.
Raid Events:
I'm not going to address the elimination of CW Quest Events like Tears of the Moon, nor am I going to spend time discussing the changes to Holy War...although we could always rant there.Instead, I'm going to talk about the evolution of the Raid Event:
Early Raid Events: Players Received cards for hitting the boss if he was taken down. Players received points based on their damage done. There were event cards that did additional damage as well as cards that blocked attacks.
Oldest Raid Events: Players could just hit bosses and gain cards for participating and gain HP by proceeding through quests or defeating a certain number of bosses. Players would pool their HP to purchase damage cards for the event bosses.
Old Raid Events: Raid Events stayed the same until after the economy changed. Players were given shards that could be traded in for chances at HP/CW/Cards. Players who had good raider cards could actually gather a lot of shards and profit pretty heavily. Players bought quite a few event cards, shared them with friends, and participated pretty heavily. Hard bosses appeared based on how many points you've accumulated. Overall, virtually the same as the earlier system except with shards that allow people to earn HP and CW instead of just R, HN, and N cards. This was a pretty good time.
Current Raid Events: Rage changed over their events to require players to have three event cards instead of the one most players were gathering. They also changed the system to require a resource that gave three attacks (To offset the 20 single card attacks people were doing). Fewer shards are given out overall. Players need to kill three weak bosses before they unlock the bosses they want. I hate this system. I know some people like it, but to me...it's hard enough to profit off of the event without having to invest in 3 Raider cards as well.
But most importantly...all the events had pretty much a two to three week break between them. It was astounding. We had time to recoup and build before the next event. It was a nice system.
Card Releases:
When Rage released we might get a few new cards a month. It was astoundingly slow actually. Players would spend their time trading for cards like Ifrit and Nightmare knowing they had just enough power. When new cards were released it was normally the result of an event and players tried to get them to help through the event. When Claymore Maid and Apsara was released it was amazing.
Then a couple card packs came out and players were pretty psyched at the options. Then it seemed like a new card pack was coming out weekly...because they were. Now, it seems like every time I log on I have to deal with 30 seconds of load time while Rage tries to get my psyched about cards while I know ten new ones with be out next week.
Either way...card releases used to be special.
Anyway....
That's it for my nostalgia? Why don't you tell me when you started and what you remember and what's changed since you started?Friday, March 1, 2013
Sorry for Delays
Sorry for delays on posts. I've been working on a lot of projects for work as well as other sites so I haven't really had time to do some of the things I've been wanting to do.
This month I plan on working on:
Updating my Best Decks Posts
A post on the evolution of Rage of Bahamut over the last year
Plus. If people post for stuff they're wanting me to write about I'd be happy to take any into consideration. As I said, I've been really busy but I'll try to commit more time this month to get some interesting stuff up here.
Thanks for the patience.
This month I plan on working on:
Updating my Best Decks Posts
A post on the evolution of Rage of Bahamut over the last year
Plus. If people post for stuff they're wanting me to write about I'd be happy to take any into consideration. As I said, I've been really busy but I'll try to commit more time this month to get some interesting stuff up here.
Thanks for the patience.
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