Sunday, June 29, 2014

Ingress and Summoners War + Ascent the space game

So, these past few days I've been playing very little Dragon's Prophet. I haven't played much Chivalry, either. This is because I found a couple of mobile games that were interesting enough to pull me away from them and I've begun working on another project.




I downloaded Summoners War a few days ago and it's been quite fun. I love monster-capture type games, and this definitely fits that. I am a bit sad that the method of getting new monsters is based on RNG. I mean, I'm a faithful follower of RNGesus, but it's still kind of annoying getting crap after crap. Although, the crap makes for great fodder in leveling up my main summons.

The combat system in the game is also pretty fun. Generally, I don't like turn-based combat, but Summoners War has kept it simple, yet strategic. Really great for a mobile game, especially when a majority of the time you're just logging on to play for 5-10 minutes at a time. The progression, at least for the summons themselves, is also massively skewed thanks to RNGesus, but it does give you something to keep playing for. I'm just afraid I'll end up getting bored/frustrated with it and quit.







The other game I've been playing a lot of the past few days is Ingress. I got a new phone with a new provider and decided to give it a try. My last phone/service was a bit iffy when it came to GPS lock/Data in my area. But the one I'm with now is pretty stable, even in the middle of no where. The only issue is that my new phones resolution is a bit smaller than the suggested resolution for Ingress. I read into a lot of ways to fix this, and I may still decide to go with them, but I found a work-around that lets me get past the few issues I was having. After getting past those issues, I can easily play the game with my phone, although there is a bit of text overlapping on some tabs - nothing serious though.

I was worried about playing in a rural area, but was surprised to find that my small town of about 900 has a number of portals. I also have several towns that aren't to far away, including some cities and one being Wichita which has something like 400k people - and seems to be fairly active going by the intel map. Here's a screenshot of my town (and yes, that is exactly how big it is - for about 10-20 minutes in any direction it's nothing but farms, too.


I suppose now I should say I decided to join the Enlightened. I enjoy being the underdog, and it seems like almost everyone plays Resistance - the numbers support that.  From the above, you can see that there is one Enlightened(Green) portal, and a lot more Resistance. This is because someone from one of the nearby bigger towns came through a few months ago and submitted a ton of portals. They're all level 1 with one level 7 and one level 8 resonator each. So they're not very strong and great for a low level like me to learn the game with.

The single Enlightened portal is one I grabbed earlier today. I took out the first resonator earlier that day and came back later after re-filling my weapons reserves to finish it off. Once I took over the portal, I put a four level 1 and four level 2 resonators on it, plus a very rare and a rare shield mod to help protect it from anyone that happens by - though I doubt that'll happen... or that the shields will stop anyone. 

My next goal is to capture the four portals in the middle and make a very small field with them, just to get familiar with it. Then I guess I'll farm a lot to get higher level so I can upgrade the portals enough so that I can make a bigger field to surround the town. Still learning, though, so that strategy may change. Or someone from Resistance will make an outing and come re-take everything and screw up my progress. 

For those that familiar with Ingress, it's the Augmented-reality mobile game that Google's "Niantic Labs" created. It has some pretty rich lore, combines geocaching, Alternate Reality Game techniques, and (of course) Augmented Reality. If you didn't notice, I included links to several wiki-pages in the last couple of sentences. In short, the game is incredibly fun - even while playing by yourself, but it is meant to be played with several people (even if you're just coordinating over the comms and not actually meeting in person). I do have two invites for the game, though I'm honestly not sure if you need to be invited anymore since the game is out of the beta - however, if you want one, just let me know in the comments and we'll figure it out.


Other than that, I've been playing a game called "Ascent" or "Ascent the Space Game" with the URL of "thespacegame.com." It's an interesting game, but very hard to get into, though from what I understand the developers has been working on improving that tutorial and new player experience. I haven't played it enough to write much on it. But so far it seems like a mix of elements from Shores of Hazeron (one of my all-time favorite games) and EVE Online (another game I enjoy), so it should be fun once I get more into it.

Anyways, that's it for now. Thanks for reading.



Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Quit Age of Wushu, Playing Dragon's Prophet, and more

So, I recently quit Age of Wushu (again). This time, it was due to getting bored with the game and not wanting to invest much more into it, as the plan was to quit once ArcheAge was available from the start. It still has most of the issues - poor customer support, bad translations, bugs, lag, etc... However, Earthquake, one of the community managers, has begun taking player input to help improve the translations of the game. I even helped contribute by posting the correct translations for some of the Shen Family Golden Needle faction. So, that is a step in the right direction!

Since then, I've been playing a few games I got from the Steam Summer Sale, as well as Dragon's Prophet to pass the time. I've also been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 here and there. However, a bulk of my time has been spent playing games for OnRPG.com. This week that was Skara - The Blade Remains and HEX: Shards of Fate. Of the two, I've got to say HEX was the more fun. I enjoyed Skara, but I've been getting my fighting fix from Chivalry: Medieval Combat/Deadliest Warrior.


Steam Summer Sale
Oddly enough, I've only bought a few games from this years Summer Sale (so far). Usually I end up buying a lot more than I would ever play, like most normal people. It's not so much because there was nothing more I wanted, just that I've forced myself to realize I probably wouldn't play most of what I got and the money is better saved for when ArcheAge rolls around. Anyways, the games I got were Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, Contagion, and one other I can't remember the name of at the moment.

I've been spending a lot of time in Deadliest Warrior - about ten hours since I got it the other day. It's been quite refreshing and is a great way to recharge my batteries when I'm starting to get bored of other games. So far, my favorite classes to play are the ninja and Samurai (hey, I may not be a super Japanophile, but  still love it). I've been getting quite frustrated the past day or so, though. It seems like a majority of the servers are full (and stay full), forcing me to play on a server with only 5-6 other people which often time leads to stacked teams. I much prefer playing on a full or almost full server, where it's a lot harder for the teams to become stacked.

Contagion I got because my cousin (who has been staying with me) has become addicted to L4D2 and I figured he would enjoy it. Surprisingly I was right and now I'm lucky if I can go half an hour without him asking to get on my computer. I've played the game myself a few times, and it's quite decent. I enjoy how it looks and feels a bit more realistic than the L4D series. The only negative I've found is that, in some of the servers/game modes, both the survivors and zombies are trying to kill you. I much prefer the modes where you're working with others to accomplish a goal, rather than trying to backstab each other.


Dragon's Prophet
The day before yesterday I decided to check out Dragon's Prophet after a thread on OnRPG made me feel a bit of nostalgia for the game. I enjoyed the game a decent amount, and the only reason I quit last year (about 7-8 months ago) is because the game is definitely a bit pay-to-win. Trying to play the game without investing at least a few hundred dollars to unlock more inventory/bank/dragon slots and help you along with improving your gear and whatnot is akin to playing Entropia Universe with nothing but sweating for income. Simply click on the link to see how fun that can be.

I do love the dragons in the game, though. And the housing. Heck, I even enjoy the combat a decent bit. I grew up on point-and-click for MMOs and Dragon's Prophet has the perfect (in my opinion) blend of point-and-click and action for its combat. However, the grindy nature of the game ended up making me bored of the game and so I quit. But now I'm back and I'm having some fun trying to re-figure everything and doing my best to make sure I don't screw up anything progress I made before I quit.

My main character, Jizzybell - a level 65 (now 66) mage.

So far, I've been sticking to Wintertide, doing the public events and soloing dungeons. I also joined a new level 100 guild, and I've been working on getting guild points in there so I can get into the guild base and start using some of the flutes I have saved up. It's bearable, but it's not quite as fun as when I was playing with a couple of friends. I'm hoping I can pull one of them back into the game and play with me for a while, but most of them are busy with other games so I doubt they'll feel like it. Oh well.





I've also been taking part in a couple of the festival events. One of the things I enjoyed the most in my time with Dragon's Prophet are the various events. The content is usually fun, rewarding (if you have a house or like costumes), and it gives you a bit of experience. The Halloween event has been my favorite to date, partially because I started the game right as it was starting but also because I feel like it had the best content and rewards without being to grindy. My Chaotic Terror is still my favorite dragon and I got it from the Halloween Pack (along with my pumpkin house and a bunch of decorations). 

In the screenshot above, I'm fighting Pinatas with a special sword that has "Dragon's Prophet" written along the blade. I thought that was pretty neat. Basically, each time you hit the Pinata, it spews candy which you then collect. Each piece you collect gives a satisfying "Ding!" as well (if you played the Sonic games as a kid, you'll feel nostalgic as it's almost exactly the same as the sound from collecting rings). The event is quite grindy, however. You need 100 candy to get just one candy coin. And the furniture stuff costs in the hundreds of coins and the weapon skins costs 1,500 coins (I think). Which is 150,000 candy you have to collect. That takes a hell of a long time, unless there's a better way to collect candy that I haven't found. Apparently there's also a dragon you can capture, too, but I haven't figured it out yet. And there's a dance event that happens every couple of hours, too. 



There's a few new features that have been added since I last played. Like the Dragon's Compendium, which is almost like a dragon pokedex and achievement system rolled into one. You get various rewards by collecting eight of a dragon or winning a certain number of fights in the arena using it. The rewards are Dragon Runes and Dragon Elements, which are used in another new feature - Dragon Skill Evolution. I honestly have no idea how that works yet, but plan to do some research tomorrow. Looks pretty neat, though.



That's about all I have to talk about for now. I am thinking about investing in getting a new house, but don't know how well that will work for me. Last I remember, house spots costs a few million gold and I have just over 800,000 to my name. Plus, the items used to purchase house slots on the Marketplace/cash shop don't seem to be there anymore. I could just be looking in the wrong places, though. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Oh, and I'm planning to start up another blog where I talk about anime and manga. It can be found here if you're interested.