Dressed for success

Spiral Knight is fun. This is how my character looks like now. :3

Spiral Knights: Thoughts about the first changes

Incoming rant warning.


Forums all fucking suck

While back I made a topic on the spiral knights forum, very long and well phrased (way better than i phrase stuff in here) that covered all points people might try pick apart to destroy my arguments.

The topic was about the energy issue that limits the game to "Shitty Facebook game" status.

The reason I spend a long time making the opening post in a topic is that if i cover everything from the start, and some idiot replies something i already covered, I can call him a fucking idiot (maybe not that explicitly) and tell him to read the topic before replying nonsense.

Here's what happened, which i actually say it it would the opening post:

• People who bought energy started replying saying it's fine even though, since they bought it, they obvious couldn't grasp the issue at all.
• People who obviously bought it posted saying they didn't buy it and that energy was actually COMPLAINED that energy was TOO CHEAP.
• People tried to diss the suggestions i posted without really reading what they were about.
• People wanting to suck the developer's cocks and say that we should all give them all of our money for that "glorious" game, cause they spent MILLIONS making the so called brilliant game IN JAVA (this attitude does not help the gaming industry, it hurts it)
  

One thing that did not happen however, is someone posting reasons, any at all, as to why the current system is good.

I was reminded how 95% of the internet is made out of retards and that's when i sorta stopped playing actively. I kept on playing but only to keep Bitten company and mostly to revive him when he lags as hell. Haven't honestly enjoyed the game since I got to tier 3.

A big argument for the current system, which really wasn't valid at all, was that "at least they're not giving equipment to buying players". Well guess what:

Well oh shit, they want your money to play AND to get items now?

[sarcasm] Truly they've made a great MMO that's balanced and doesn't kick non paying players in the nuts [/sarcasm]

This is officially worse than Dynasty warriors online.


The recent changes:

As i heard, 16 or so new swords were implemented. most notable is that the brandish family was greatly extended.

Since a while back, PizzaCat mentioned to me that the community was complaining about the game and Wiki, specifically, how the dmg on weapons supposedly wasn't displayed accurately.

Something that may nag people who play Spiral Knights (sure annoys me tons personally), is how all stats are relative all the time: Each level you do, enemies have more health and your weapon deals more damage. It's really hard to judge if a new weapon is better or worse than an old one without directly having both equipped and hitting the enemy with both. With armor, you just cannot tell at all.

So today i played, and made myself an Avenger before we started adventuring. It has a lil less atk than the Ascended Calibur i carry around but decided to try it out.

I was shocked that a lvl 1 Avenger does more dmg than a lvl 10 Ascended Calibur. I'm not even talking about enemies weak to elemental dmg, I'm talking about the ones neutral to it.

As i figure it:

• How elemental dmg works in RPGs/MMOs: does extra dmg to enemies that are weak to it, doesn't add dmg to enemies neutral to it, and either heals or does very reduced dmg to enemies resistant to it.
• Here's how it actually works in Spiral Knights: does a lot extra to enemies weak to it, does a lil extra to enemies neutral to it, and does either a tiny to no extra dmg to enemies resistant to it.

Heck at one point I assumed the elemental bar was the percentage of the atk that was elemental, but no, it's literally like swingin 2 swords at once, one elemental and one normal.

With that said, the Calibur family, which i assumed was good all-around, is actually crappy compared to any elemental sword in the game.

This is probably one of the best swords in the game now:

Even though the Leviathan has maxed out dmg, this sword will easily do more to most enemies. I thought the Calibur family was one of those "no strengths, but no weaknesses either", but turns out that nah.

But to b fair, this weapon mix up isn't that much of a big deal, just wish it had been explained to me sooner.

However, me and Zach believe that the normal dmg bar isn't global, but relative to each weapon family. but again, stats being relative all over, can't really even test this theory. Can't they just use numbers like everyone else? would fixed monsters stats be that bad? The deeper i go the less i can figure out how much life enemies are supposed to have.

Also, all of this for a game where you play the same maps over and over again. content wise, still a tiny ass game. Seriously, there's infinitely more variety in a single player game, like Disagea 2, than this game. The fact that this is a MMO barely factors in cause lag is more and more of an issue.

Generic portrait thingies

There's this Fire Emblem game that has a set of sub portraits that are much simplified versions of slightly bigger and detailed portraits of the characters, not sure which game it is specificly though.

Anyway, saw those a while back, and REALLY liked them, there was something absolutely charming to it.

I would love to have a set of those for us to use on the blog, so much i actually decided to try it, and sorta failed:

You may say "These aren't so bad", and i think you'd be right, but it's not the style/look i was going for.

Still, it's something to post and show off.

Minecraft is a curse to productivity

I hereby apologize to anyone who commissioned Zach for anything.

I decided to host a Minecraft server a few days ago just for my closest friends to fool around in, and suddenly, like 4 days passed.

We've build a rather nice and weird village, and it's still amazing to me how much of a time killer this game is.

I'm already miss being productive, will try to update seen and get more stuff done.

Spiderdub moved and ep12 is out

manwith10toes3, the creator of Spiderdub, got his Youtube account closed up for the usual copyright bullshit everyone who gets their account closed up gets.

However, he just made a new account and is uploading his videos on it.

Also, enjoy the new Spiderdub:

Swimsuit Tephy

Just something Bitten doodled for my character Tephy for her anniversary.

Been forgettin over and over to post it.

It's meant to be a color reference for her since i don't really have many proper references around.

Back then Bitten said he'd do one of each of my characters as their anniversaries came along, but I think he already gave up on that.

Obscure fighting games from Japan

Free fighting games, made by dirty asians.



Ok this 2nd one is actually sorta neat.

Jap voice acting and Metroid drink

2 interesting things I've been shown:

1- All male jap voice actors voicing an all girl anime:


Honestly, it's way way better. If you think it's too long, skip to 3:56.

2- A Metroid drink:

Click pic for more details.

I kinda dig it... Certainly looks neat, i wonder how it tastes...

Hare Trigger

I saw a bunch of concept art recently that made me wanna draw something that has character. The idea is that it's a really agitated rabbit monster thing that's really easy to piss off. I wish I could be more articulate about it, but that's really all there is to it.

About that Spiral Knights thing...

I was planning to make more posts about the game as I played it, However, I've gained acess to the last Tier, and i had an epiphany that could be translated more or less into: "That's it?"

I got... oddly disappointed upon reaching the last Tier of Spiral Knights. I guess i was feeling it before i even got to that tier though... Let me try to explain:

There's only 4 gates open at all times in Spiral knights, There's different types of maps on each, that can b randomized, but honestly, I played all layouts at least 5 times each. On some runs, u get the same map twice, just in a different elemental and u start from the end. We even had a run where we did the same layout 4 times!

There's also very little diversity in enemies, which does NOT help either.

And I can already reach the "endgame" stuff? after a week?

Energy cost is going up rather insanely fast, it's almost triple the cost it was at launch now. Seeing as what's left for me to do is get all 5 star equipment, and it takes 2-3 days to farm energy for just a 4 star one, I'm kinda done.

Just feels like i seen everything there was to see and killed most of what's to kill, all that's left is a torturous grind trying to get energy that is just too expensive, for no real purpose.

Don't get me wrong, the game is really nice looking, the gameplay is excellent and there's other nice things going for it, but, it's buggy, has a lot of downsides and very very little content for a MMO.

I'm reminded of a penny arcade comic where Tycho and Gabe are talking about the doom 3 engine, one of them says it's a really nice engine, the other says he can't wait until they make a game with it. That's how i feel about Spiral Knights right now.

Spiral Knights: Weapons

Like most MMOs, Weapons are a big part of Spiral Knights. In fact, maybe more in spiral knights than other games since there are no character levels in SK, only equipment level.

Weapon types

There's actually 3 types of weapons you can use in Spiral knights

• Swords

Basic weapons with decent damage and attack speed and allow you to quickly guard after attacking, although that varies depending the the sword you choose.

Swords mostly tend to do horizontal slashes and can hit multiple enemies easily if they are grouped together. Can b charged up for a stronger attack with special properties and/or area of effect.

• Guns

These are the main reason we want to punch Pizzacat in the face.

Guns have infinite ammo, but still require being reloaded. Attack rate is generally slower than sword and do much less damage. Some can b shot while walking but make u slower, charging a shot with a gun makes u walk slower as well (unlike swords). Guarding after attacks takes a bit as well.

Even with all these flaws, the range would b a good advantage it it wasn't for the enemy AI, see, enemies dodge, they can dodge even melee attacks sometimes although they often don't, but some enemies are coded to dodge 95% of the time a bullet is shot

Making having someone who insists on using guns in your party a plague.

• Bombs

Unlike the previous 2, bombs can only be used if fully charged, as a result, not very spamable. they're definitely not use as a main weapon ever. They can have decent ranges when upgraded and can afflict status effect with a lil more ease then the other weapons.

These are mostly used for crowd control and/or spreading status effects, not to say they're not good, but it's not meant to b used on it's own.

Crafting

You can either buy or craft equipment, however, buying from the shops is far more expensive and generally not worth it.

Advantages of crafting:

• Way cheaper

Any 2 star equipment in the shops costs 7500 crowns

2 star recipe cost 1000 crowns to buy, crafting it requires the needed materials (which honestly are very easy to come by for 2 star items), 400 crowns and 50 energy. Even assuming energy is at a very high cost, it should be far less than the shop cost.

You may also run into people that will craft things for you either at a price, or just material cost only.

• Unique variants

Rather interesting feature is that when you craft anything, you get a small random chance of producing a unique variant with a random bonus.

Examples would be increased attack speed, or bonus damage to a specific type of enemies.

Because of that, a lot of people craft the same item over and over, and may sell the extras rather cheap. They also buy tons of materials from early game, seeing as all recipes require them.



Aside from these, crafting is also the only way to get some weapons.

However, note that, there are alchemy trees such as for example:

Each recipe requires the result of the previous one as an ingredient. But the trouble seems to usually result into good and specialized items.

Also, unique variants can be carried over from 1 item to the next in line. For example, if i have a Super blast bomb that gained a bonus dmg against slimes, I can choose to carry that over when I upgrade it to the master blast bomb.

If you want a Big angry bomb with a unique variant, it's best to try to get that variant as a blast bomb because of it's cheap crafting cost.

Spiral Knights: Intro

Spiral Knights is a new free MMO developed by "Three Rings", and somehow, Sega's involved in this project, although how exactly, i do not know.

www.spiralknights.com

Me, Zach and our friends Shigoto and Pizzacat were in the closed beta. as of earlier this week, the game is live and open to the public. Seeing as i enjoy the game, I'm thinking about making a series of posts detailing aspects of the game for those who are interested in it.

The plot

This game has a particularly original setting:

The race of spiral knights land on the alien world called cradle, and are stranded on it. They have to fend for themselves and so setup an HQ in an old mining outpost.

They soon detect that the core of the planet has an immense energy source, and spiral knights run on energy, thus it's extremely valuable to them.

To access the core, they must make their way into the clockworks, which is a giant subterranean complex, ever changing, that houses bits of different worlds, creatures and treasures.

To enter the clockworks, they create gates that lead into them, powered by crystals found into the clockworks themselves. as a gate is explored, all spiral knights extract the crystals to feed it to a new gate.

The gameplay

The game is almost always compared to "The legend of Zelda: Four swords adventures", and with good reason. Quite often you'll hear people say "Just like in Zelda" when they describe the gameplay, and more.

However, using a keyboard and mouse, the gameplay is more polished. So much in fact, nothing really seems wrong with it at all.

The game is very easy to pick up, mechanics are simple and enjoyable, and off you go.

The monster AI is rather interesting, but perhaps I'll get to that in a later post.

Lag can be of an issue sometimes, but normally it's not. There's rare moments where it's rather heavy and affects gameplay, but i think that's cause they're messing with the servers still.

The one obvious issue

In a word: Energy.

As I mentioned in the plot, These being require energy to operate, and that's also reflected ingame: If your knight has no energy, you cannot go into the clockworks.

That effectively means you can't really play, oh sure, u can hang in town and talk to people, but that's not playing now is it?

So how does one get energy? Excluding buying it with real money, there's a single global auction house where, player who bough energy with real money can sell it in exchange for the ingame currency, which is crowns.

Interesting concept, but almost anyone can see how this could royally fuck up rather quickly.

Even if you haven't played, you're probably thinking it right now: What happens if the players who bought energy with real money sell it high, so high that other players cannot earn crowns to buy energy at a good enough rate to simply keep playing the game? The answer is simple, they can't play.

In the industry it's called "You've fucked it up".

During the closed beta, the price of energy was high, very very high, so high that we could not play the game more than 1 hour a day. even if literally all that you earned went towards buying energy, you couldn't afford it and couldn't play.

Just before the game went live, we who were in the closed beta had early access, and the cost of energy then was wonderful, it was 1200 crowns. We were delighted, we played all day and loved it.

3 days later, Game went live, it rose to 1400-1500 crowns, still very reasonable. As of now, the game has been live for 3 days, and the cost of energy has drastically rose up to 2600+ crowns.

New players already cannot make enough crowns to keep playing and have to wait for energy to regenerate the next day.



It's a really nice game, but they just had to fuck up somewhere.