Yearly Archives: 2013

FusionFall Heroes

FusionFall Heroes is a 2.5D online adventure that you can play either with friends or solo. Choose from some of Cartoon Network’s greatest heroes including Finn, Dexter, and Gumball, and leap into action on different maps, each with their own unique baddy challenges. Collect loot to unlock dozens of heroes and costumes – all from your browser!

Prime World – Post-Steam Launch Review

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

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Lately a lot of new MOBA games have been announced and released, Prime World among them. Prime World is a free to play role playing strategy game that at first sight is a little different than the normal MOBA game I have seen. Instead of trying to just copy the standard successful formula like others released this year, Prime World sees players building their own your own Castle and leveling their heroes to increase their power overtime. Though the game had a bit of a rocky beta, it’s now launched on Steam and hammering out its various issues one by one so we thought it was time to check back in with Nival’s English launch again. The question I had on my mind though is if these extracurricular features outside the MOBA combat would be the right spice to make the game unique, or elements that break the balance for newer players.

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Before you hop into the game and are ready to go, you need to make a character and chose a side. It is rather weird to me that you have to choose between two sides in a MOBA game since it can be rather unbalanced, but since there is no information about either I guess it is just a matter of which character you think you’ll like most. I went for the blue side named the Dohkts Imperium as opposed to the Prime addicted savages in the Keepers of Adornia. Both nations are in a clash fighting for control of the central Prime reserves, a critical resource. This source of energy is a dangerous alien substance that alters the world and gives its user the power to manipulate reality. This sounds really interesting and all, but personally for me I do not really care much about the story behind MOBA games. What I do know is that Prime influences your strengths and level in Prime World.

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In many MOBA games, you earn experience and money to buy items at the shop. It is different in Prime World. Every monster, or player you kill will earn you experience and Prime. Prime can be seen as gold, the currency to buy items and skills with. But in Prime World, there isn’t actually a shop that will sell you items to strengthen your heroes. There is only a shop to buy potions, teleports and other useful utilities to use during the games. In this game you will find yourself Talents; these talents can be bought with Prime you collect during the game. You are able to buy these talents at any position of the map and thus do not need to go back to spawn to waste time. These talents can be anything ranging from skills, stat-based items, or passive buffs. You can also earn new talents from playing matches or building them via the Castle resource system, though a talent can only be assigned to one hero at a time so some strategy is involved in deciding which hero you use is best suited for a given talent. This offers a level slightly more advanced than summoner skill type options in other MOBAs as an advanced character can bring 5+ skills not normally present on said hero. As you can imagine, this makes the learning curve pretty harsh when you’re constantly seeing the same hero busting out new tricks.

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Just like in many other MOBA games, you have the ability to buy heroes with either the in game currency, or with Gold that is bought with real money. When you first start out you will only have a few heroes that you can play as, so if you want to speed things up you can spend a little cash to get your mercenary empire going. I myself was given 200 gold coins and bought two heroes that looked rather interesting. You can also buy different skins for these heroes that can be previewed in the shop or information bar of the hero. Everything can be found in your Castle view, i.e. the view you have when you are not in the game. Here you can also build structures that gather resources for you. At first this was rather confused to me, what do you need resources for in a MOBA game? Well you use them for buying more structures that impact gameplay whether by rushing vigor regeneration (a stamina system that impacts how quickly heroes can gain experience), unlocking new talents, and acquiring additional silver (the non-cash shop currency).

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Now onto the actual gameplay! Pride World isn’t really different from any other MOBA game that I have seen, apart from the fact their bases are a little messy and rather random in terms of structure placement. In the core map mode (one among eighth modes) you will find three lanes. In these lanes you will find towers that will defend their area ferociously. If a minion or enemy hero comes close to the tower, it will strike them down with fast scaling damage on each hit. The tower will also attack the player that is the first one to attack an enemy hero in the vicinity of this tower, though various bugs or weird behavior sometimes makes these towers strike your hero randomly. I just chalk it up to not being liked.

Anyway, players should see these as guardian angels helping the heroes out in the lower levels, so it’s not wise to do much tower diving until much later. No really, these towers are a lot meaner than most MOBAs. After a couple of levels however you will easily notice that these towers are becoming weaker and you can risk more. Between these lanes you will also find the jungle, and the jungle minions camping in it. In my opinion this jungle is slightly too large, and ganking isn’t as common as a result. Players on the run have plenty of room to maneuver and dodge from pursuers though so it certainly has an impact on gameplay.

Teleportation tends to dominate this game with both scrolls to jump to towers being quite cheap and all heroes starting with a ‘teleport anywhere on your terrain’ skill on a very short cooldown (that varies in some of the modes). As such it’s not uncommon to suddenly have a massive team fight suddenly materialize in your lane as both teams blow all their teleports at once to save/destroy a specific tower in a rushed push.

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This teleportation dominance becomes more apparent at higher levels when masterful supports can be found camping a minigame in their base as a fifth gold stream, only to materialize in lane for a saving heal when one of their allies needs a saving throw. Overall communication becomes more important than ever as the enemy is almost always missing in action and warding is less effective considering the vast number of routes between each lane.

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Among the many issues with this game at launch, queue times were the biggest offender. At least in the early game, this seems to be resolved with an average wait of three minutes for matches now. The match making system becomes a bit more troublesome as you advance as the game considers your account level as well as selected hero level and personal hero elo when building matches. As such the game may eventually throw the most advanced players against relatively new people after they’ve waited an unfair amount of time trying to find a suitable opponent. Honestly this can only be resolved with more players and more veterans queuing up so hopefully time heals these wounds.

The game introduces clan rankings and clan resource gathering with various buffs involved. It’s clear Nival was aiming to attract the MMORPG crowd into the MOBA universe with this game and it seems to do so well enough, though perhaps shunning some of the more core MOBA crowd in the process.

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Conclusion: Good

Prime World is progressing well and pushing the limits of innovation much harder than most of the cash cows trying to jump into this burgeoning market. As I had said before, I’m not sure their tactics are the right approach as the MOBA genre has been pretty solid for the past few years and its playerbase may be hesitant to accept so many mechanical changes at once. Though I’m not still knocking on the talent sand castle system that initially seemed confusing and a waste of my time, but as I explored further become an enjoyable diversion to pass time while waiting in queue. The talent system can offer some pretty powerful advantages though that seem a bit unfair for those looking for balanced competitive gameplay, but I guess that’s the same for any PvP MMORPG out there as well. The game itself still needs a lot of tweaking and many of the heroes feel a little off in terms of balance (especially when looking at the extra modes) but since it is still so early in development, that shouldn’t be a huge surprise. For me at least I like what I see and have included Prime World into my rotation of MOBAs that I play regularly.

LOTRO Helm’s Deep Press Preview

By W.B Wemyss (Tagspeech)

The Lord of the Rings Online, an award-winning fantasy MMORPG from Turbine, is getting yet another large expansion on November 18th.  The Helm’s Deep expansion is going to be expanding on the epic storyline of the game, which follows a path peripheral but often intertwined with the protagonists of Tolkien’s classic tale.  In the developer’s tour of the expansion, I got to have the first look at the most highly anticipated aspect of the expansion: a total gameplay overhaul.

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This is the kind of thing that developers lose sleep over, as a complete mechanics and class overhaul can either cement an aging game into the pantheon of hits, allowing the devs to build further on it in the future, or create a catastrophic uproar among the community it will never recover from (Star Wars Galaxies springs to mind).  Some of the changes coming in Helm’s Deep are enough to light the LOTRO forums on fire with doomsaying and speculation, but my experiences with the devs in this walking tour of their process was illuminating.  And not in a bad way.

 

Aside from some minor technical issues with the video feed, I found myself admiring the professional candor of the LOTRO team.  They have a clear vision for what they’re doing, and they’re able to defend these core changes from community paranoia, while simultaneously taking in and implementing beta feedback with rapid responses.  They’ve taken full advantage of some of their elder players and class professionals in the beta, and have been implementing sweeping changes and updates to their beta build on a weekly basis.  They could not be taking this more seriously.  Competence is a rare and beautiful thing, and the LOTRO team has plenty of it.

 

The first thing that’s flying out the window is LOTRO’s aging trait system.  The virtues and deeds are remaining, allowing players to earn character-defining stat perks just like before; but now, players earn trait points, much like the talent points of yore, and use those in (you guessed it) trait trees to define their character’s path and specialization.  A player is able to pick a specialization early on, and receives unlocking benefits for investing in their primary tree, while having a point penalty for spending trait points outside of their specialization.  This encourages focus, while stilling allowing for a bit of choice hybridization, if the player so desires.

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The stated goal of these fundamental changes by the devs is to make LOTRO’s admittedly limp-wristed combat feel much more impactful, engaging, and fun.  To this end, many passive, dull utility skills have been made much more active.  For example, a captain no longer buffs her allies through a thirty-minute cast-and-forget ability.  The captain instead is rewarded with group buffs by actively participating in combat and using their abilities.  This is just one example of how the “more active combat” goal is being implemented.  Chronic mouse-clickers will also be pleased that reactive abilities will appear during their windows of opportunity on a special UI bar near their cursor, further minimizing the amount of deft keystroking and juggling a player has to do in a game that’s notorious for filling action bars with skills upon skills.

 

Some of the changes are a huge breath of fresh air for classes that were otherwise a bit one-dimensional.  The hunter, LOTRO’s go-to ranged nuker, seems to have been one of the most overhauled classes.  Being a pure DPS class, three separate trait specializations will have a difficult time not being redundant.  So, the LOTRO team has made three unique playstyles: a mid-range skirmisher that can attack while moving without penalty, a stationary long-range nuker, and a crowd-control/trap focused fighter with some unique, flashy abilities (The One Trap, for example, has some satisfying spike action, in addition to having an amusing name).

 

Monster play (LOTRO’s unique PVP system) will also be receiving some love, with the “Creeps” (monster characters) receiving new ways to specialize and empower themselves.  The armor-swapping issue for Freeps (Free Peoples, or non-monster players) has apparently been addressed, and annoying Hobbits will no longer be switching gear sets in the middle of PVP events.  This has apparently been a long-standing complaint among monster players.

 

These are just a few examples of how the LOTRO team at Turbine are bringing their aging game well up to date.  While many players still fear that the changes could ruin what they’ve come to know and love, my experiences with their tour were largely positive.  As a fan of the game myself, I think it’s safe to say that these changes and additions to the game will bring a glorious breath of fresh air to an aging classic, allowing the devs to expand in the future with a brand new, easily-managed and intuitive system.

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As an on-again, off-again player who has always been enchanted by LOTRO’s aesthetic, storytelling, and vibrant community, I’m very excited for these upcoming changes to the game’s ancient class and combat system.  The core gameplay, while solid and decidedly old-school, was always the one thing keeping this generally fantastic game from being The One MMORPG to Rule My Life.  With any luck, the Helm’s Deep expansion is going to take LOTRO from intermittent diversion, to my very own full-on gaming commitment.

 

Either way, the changes slated for the expansion are intended to be the dev team’s“opening argument” for a more comprehensive overhaul of the core mechanics, and is in no way going to be the final effort.  This is a game with devs who are looking toward the long haul, and very much appreciate and respect their community, while simultaneously making executive decisions about the design and keeping players in the how/why/when of it all.  If you haven’t played LOTRO yet, or quit a long while back, Helm’s Deep is a great time to drop in and see if the fires of interest are kindled anew.  It’s free to play, after all.  You’ve got nothing to lose but hard-drive space.

To get a better visual of the changes, you can catch today’s devblog showcasing the thought process behind a lot of these changes.

Tagspeech is the alias of author W.B. Wemyss, who was responsible for the bizarre cyberpunk fever dream called Children of Athena

Shotgun News 10/18: Lord of the Rings, Champions, and Dogs of War

Lord of the Rings Online Offers 100% XP Boost

For the next month leading up to the release of Helm’s Deep, LotRO is offering a 100% XP boost. This boost became available yesterday and will continue until November 17th.

 

Champions Online Introduces New Alert System

Smash and Grab

A new change has been introduced to Champions Online in an effort to make the alert system more enjoyable. The rewards for Grab and Smash alerts have been swapped. In addition Grab alerts will require players to be level 10, while Smash alerts will be for level 20 or higher.

 

Dogs of War Hosts Stress Test This Weekend

Cyanide is opening the doors of Dogs of War to all this weekend. They’re inviting players to push the servers to their limits this weekend and get a look at the free to play multiplayer game currently in closed beta. Access it via Steam until Monday.

Elemental Kingdoms Launch Pack Giveaway

OnRPG is partnering with Perfect World Entertainment to celebrate the launch of their first mobile title, Elemental Kingdom!

With unique features, an innovative deployment time management system, and 200 distinct cards offering campaigns with over 80 stages spread across four kingdoms, it’s TCG “2.0.” Players can share battle replays, and test their on the fly tactics by facing other players in draft battles with randomly generated decks. Daily events, ranking charts, and free ways to acquire and build up new varieties of decks set Elemental Kingdoms as one of the top mobile games in China. Now you can experience it in English on your iPhone!

The Elemental Kingdoms Promotional Code Unlocks 300 in-game Gems.
 

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To Redeem your Key:

  • Go to the App Store and download Elemental Kingdoms
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  • Enter our 6 digit code provided below [e9F53Y]
  • Players who register with the invitation code between [10/17] and [10/24] will receive their 300 gem reward, a $3 free value, on [10/25]. Players who register with the invitation code from [10/25] – [10/31] will receive their 300 gem reward on [11/1].
  • Offer expires on October 31st, 23:59 (PDT) so don’t delay!