Surprise! Niantic brought Pokemon Go to E3 2017 and invited members of the gaming press outside the sacred halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center to check out the upcoming raid system at a nearby gym. We were granted not just some juicy details on upcoming changes but a rare chance to interview several key members of the team, including Senior Product Manager Tatsuo Nomura, Global Product Marketing Lead Archit Bhargava, and a bit of time with Niantic Director of Engineering Edward Wu. Perhaps more so than the Generation 2 update, summer feels like it’s bringing an expansion-like update to the free to play game. PokeRaiders There are so many new additions and changes coming out this summer, but let’s start with raiding. We’ve known from data mining that it’d be coming and correctly guessed that it’s the Mewtwo event seen in the game’s original trailer. Raid Battles are the new cooperative play option that Niantic’s been … [Read more...] about E3 2017: Pokemon Go’s raiding, gym revamp, badges, and an interview with Niantic
6 pointed star gang
Perfect Ten: MMOs with the most needlessly obtuse stats
One of my favorite reviewers of tabletop RPGs at one point opined that percentile systems were one of the best tabletop mechanics possible, simply because they’re so intuitive. You might not know the system backwards and forwards, but if you see a character has “Pick Locks 70%,” you know what that means immediately with no need to reference any other numbers. It’s clear at a glance, and that makes a big difference in your ability to pick up and play the game. Online games are not tabletop games (except when they are, but let’s leave that column to one side for a moment), but they do have a similar reliance on stats. And for a lot of those games, what a given stat does is pretty clear. Even games with a lot of stats usually make sense. You might pick up a piece of gear in EverQuest II with a dozen different stats on it, but as long as it’s clear what all of those stats do, you can evaluate how useful that gear is to you. These games are ones … [Read more...] about Perfect Ten: MMOs with the most needlessly obtuse stats
GDC 2018: Ultima Online post-mortem with Richard Garriott, Starr Long, Raph Koster, and Rich Vogel
Plenty of panels at GDC are recorded and uploaded to the internet weeks after the event. It’s not quite the same as being there, as you miss a few things. For example, this year’s Ultima Online Post-Mortem panel was packed. It was international. It was fun, gross, nostalgiac, and sometimes groan-inducing. And I’d hate to just summarize the talk, especially since some of you vets have heard these stories before, but since ya’ll couldn’t make it, I’ll do it. For you. But for this particular panel, not only will I try to summarize what was said before the panel will be viewable online in a few weeks, but I’ll dish out on the after-panel chat with Richard Garriott, Starr Long, Raph Koster, and Rich Vogel, including comments from the team on bad bans, kingslaying, VR, and the state of the MMORPG. Doom desires Let’s set the stage for a moment here. As the UO team pointed out, our current setups are significantly better than … [Read more...] about GDC 2018: Ultima Online post-mortem with Richard Garriott, Starr Long, Raph Koster, and Rich Vogel