Wednesday Weigh In - Engineer

Now we have a Dev speak for the Engineer! All 6 classes are on the table, what are you going to play?

I am thinking Stalk-Sling-gineer-orior-Esp-ic. That wasn't forced. Nope.

Seriously though, I have no idea, like every MMO I will roll up one of everything and I'll just end up playing one more than the others.

Today's Weight, to the minute, is 220.8 pounds. Not bad. I thought I'd have a harder time getting this number down with all the sitting around the house, but as it turns out sitting at a work PC or a gaming PC seems to have similar caloric effects...also less stress.

System Changes - Time To Kill

TTK is the measurement of how long it takes a player to kill a target. In previous builds of the beta the TTK was quite long. In the current build, shown in the recent Carbine live streams, TTK has been significantly reduced. What does this change? How does it effect difficulty? How does it effect fun? What else can be modified to keep these elements in balance? I will explore after the cut.

Weekend Without Wildstar - Starbound

It's Sunday!? Well that's one more weekend closer to Wildstar that I hardly notice happen. I did a 5 hour stream of Starbound on Friday, and I sure as heck didn't stop playing when the camera turned off. It has consumed my weekend.

I've never been pulled in by this type of game before, the whole harvest and build open world thing. I'm not an artistic creative type, I am an information gatherer, but I have a standing rule with my friends that if they buy me something on Steam I will stream it, especially if it's multi-player. So my buddy Drash got me a copy and we tried it out.

For the $15 price tag there is a lot to do currently, but it is in Beta, and there is a content cliff. Yes, even in an open world (Universe) sandbox there is content that needs development. Currently the crafting and resource tiers are not correctly connected above the first tier boss. In the game as it was this weekend, there are 3 boss tiers leading to Sector X and the highest level content, but when the game is complete I understand there will be 10 total tiers. The struggle caused by the resource distribution is that you are required to go into areas that /far/ outreach your gear in order to gather the materials needed to progress to fight bosses that /far/ outreach your gear in order to reach even higher level planets that have the resources you need to start catching up your gear to the things you are fighting.

It's still a fun time, but there is a lot of drawing boxes around high level enemies and beating them to death 2 HP at a time.

I am unsure what the completed game will be and when it will be completed, I am sure everyone's $15 is helping them fund development, but only time will tell the true value of the title.

Additionally, and I'm sure I'll mention this a few times, I've updated my Twitter handle to @itsboats because everyone pronounces my last name wrong. Maybe this will help.

Wednesday Weigh In - The Medic: Healing, now with more BWAAS!

Q: I don't get the title.
A: You need to watch more Honest Trailers.

This week has been filled with last minute doctor appointments and family visits. I managed to shave another half a pound off my weight, I need to ramp that up if I want to make any real progress before Wildstar sees the light of day. currently at 224.1 pounds.

This week also saw the introduction of the first of the two "secret" classes: The Medic the healer with the Wub-wubs. (Stephen Frost in an interview with IGN described the sound design and said it was one of his favorites.)

The question I asked last week - "What are those things" was answered as "Resonators" a tool that can both mend and harm...sometimes both at the same time.

The other primary features of the medic are fields and probes. Fields are persistent ground spawns that have effects ranging from snares to healing to ... umm ... other things. Also, probes. These are "over time" effects providing damage or healing while they last, but additionally while they are active they can be triggered to explode adding value. This means that a medic who wants to perform at the highest level will need to be constantly aware of positioning and timing. (This applies to both healing and damage.)

The resource for the Medic are Power Cores. These start out at full each fight (they regen out of combat) and are required for some abilities which consume them. To regain cores in combat a basic attack or heal will need to be used. Depending on the cost of abilities and how this flows with TTK the rhythm of combat could be fun. I am also unsure how this works with the healing resource that they've identified: focus.

There has not been an AMA yet on the medic so That's the basics, later this week I may have more to say about Dr. Dubstep.

Class Flick

Way too much info came out today. I'm going to just give you this delicious piece of cinema which was all I was expecting. Tomorrow I'll talk about the Medic and Thursday the Engineer.

Did I mention the Engineer?!

Happy Bots

System Changes - Breakout Gameplay

Another week begins. Took care of pressing matters this morning and now it's on to the fun business of talking about Wildstar! I would like to talk about the new questing system and how that all works after the change, but they have done a fantastic job of not talking about that at all during the live streams...so it's time to talk about CC, which in Wildstar's case is kind of a nifty topic because they have Breakout Gameplay. Summary in video Dev Speak form, analysis after the cut.

Weekend Without Wildstar - Steam Sale

Once again Valve is bringing out the holiday values. It's just a short sale that started earlier this week, and will run through the 3rd.

We've seen some deep cuts on some really good indie games. Yesterday Papers Please, Don't Starve and Game Dev Tycoon were all right around $5. Even some big names are getting the single digit discount, FF7 for $4, Skyrim was even in that range two days ago (hopefully that price will return in a flash sale)

Today Dishonored is 7.50. I played the balls out of Thief when I was younger, and Dishonored seems to be the same type of game, unfortunately me and first person do not get along these days, I'd have to add a bottle of Dramamine to the purchase price. I certainly recommend it if you don't suffer from virtual motion sickness. Saint's Row 4 is also down to $20, along with Divinity Dragon Commander. (in a flash sale)

A weird segue, if you are a fan of the Divinity series an update to the kickstarter for Divinity: Original Sin showed up today, guest staring two thirds of the Co-optional Podcast.

Kind of a light post since I'm not recommending a specific game, if another crazy deal pops up over the weekend I may update the post. obviously you can hit up Steam to see the most recent deals, and if you miss it, don't worry, the Winter Sale is only a month away and many of the featured items will likely return.

I'm picking up Dragon Commander because everyone says the Mass Effect-ish interactions you have with the different characters and races creates a very unique story.