Anet continues its "too little too late" campaign

[raspberry jam]

The ecosystem example was pretty funny.

Equilibrium is hard to achieve in complex systems. Even in nature, balance can go out.

In my game, one type of level has spawns that are kinda like those in DotA, but the AI is quite different. Ever wondered why those trash spawns were so weak and dumb and didn't actually group up or do anything useful? Well, the reason is that if you put a bit of AI into them, they can quickly get out of balance and form a big zerg that is hard to stop even with skilled play. And once side has its zerg, the other side can't do much about it.

In order to provide a predictable homogeneous and tailored experience, such natural imbalance are commonly removed. Mobs are independent, stupid, easy to kill, spawn at low rates and density.

But if as a player you are willing to accept a world where things can go out of balance, even to the point there's no way to recover from it, then the experience becomes much more enriching. The game becomes not just combat, but also keeping the system from falling against you, and trying to get the system to fall against them.

Yeah when I read about it, I recalled the introduction of toads into Australia's ecosystem.

For the system to work, there should be a dynamically running ecosystem, but one that could be... let's say, nudged. The system would need to be constantly monitored, and advantages could be silently inserted on a losing side to bring things back on track. Of course the entire system would need to be designed with this in mind. Having buffer pools that actually work even in the presence of players would be another key thing though I think.

Yeah a zerg... that could happen if you did that. One counter to that could be to force the spawns to not group up by involving some sort of AoE or something... That will cause an "AoE analogue" to the zerg though. Another idea could be resource management. Either in the form that troops that need supply, supply trains or whatever takes a certain amount of space, or there is a maximum supply flow on a certain route, making a zerg starve itself down to size. Or resource nodes of some sort that needs to be defended in order to support the army, so that you force the spawns to spread out.

Or, absolutely, accepting that the system falls. That doesn't fit so well in MMOs though!

[Alaris]

(...)

The thing is that all these efforts are spent trying to keep the system static. It's much easier to just have foes not moving around, spaced apart, respawning on a counter. Boring? Yes. ANet's solution is awesome in faking real ecosystems, but when you look at it, it's easy to see past the smokescreen.

Nah, I decided to go crazy on the other side, and fix the problems another way... Keep the levels self-contained, and allow players to upset the balance. In fact, if you can in any way shape or form upset the balance to your advantage, you can win the level that way. Instead of balancing it away, I decided to make it part of the gameplay.

I can do that pretty well in small contained levels, because once you win, the level resets for replay. It makes for a good experience of synergy (protecting and working with your units actually matters) during gameplay once you understand the zerg you're with and against.

At the MMO level, it would require the players to organize and use strategies like used in WvW or 300... find ways to put the zerg at a massive disadvantage, and work their numbers down. I think it would be awesome, but it would require you to allow players to switch servers. Single players could move away from servers that are massively losing. Organized large guilds could actually join losing servers for a greater challenge. Or failing that, losing servers that become unpopulated could be reset... a world could actually be lost this way.

It would make for a very uneven experience. Culling would become a hugely important factor in regular PvE. Soloing would be a lot more difficult. It would not be a game for the masses, but it could get its own niche very well.

[Смерть]

Just saw these in the GemStore just now (Valentine's stuffs + Unided Red Dyes):


And Apparently I missed the update when they amended the original town clothes.

[shawn]

Amended the town clothes? Say what now?

[Giggles]

say what? does this mean you can transmute these?

[Смерть]

Probably due to me not being in town clothes for a very long while, but the outfit above did not use to have sleeves. I don't think they are transmutable yet still.

[RD]

The guy one looked the same when I accidentally turned it on last week.

[shawn]

Probably due to me not being in town clothes for a very long while, but the outfit above did not use to have sleeves. I don't think they are transmutable yet still.

I'm pretty sure it always had sleeves actually.. At least since release anyway, not 100% certain about beta since I was usually rocking the pirate outfit.

[Fae]

the pic of that outfit on the wiki has been there since 4th september and has sleeves. \o_O/

[Karuro]

Outfit always had them.
It's still the same like it was in beta.