Never spent a cent on your F2P game? Congratulations, you're a hare!

I've noticed that whenever an F2P game is criticised as having somewhat evil monetisation strategies, someone will invariably pop up and say, 'I've never spent any money on this game, and I am so leet! You can totally play for free!'

...or at least, for very little!

*Nugget peers at her 2 Forsaken World accounts, with a grand total of US$301 spent in the course of more than 3 years.*

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees.... BUT!

That doesn't make you (or me!) a good little underdog, sticking it to The Man... or whatever the mentality seems to be in most F2P communities I've been a part of.

What that makes us is rabbits.

Or more accurately, mechanical hares.

Modern greyhound racing has its origins in coursing.[1] The first recorded attempt at racing greyhounds on a straight track was made beside the Welsh Harp reservoir, Hendon in 1876, but this experiment did not develop. The industry emerged in its recognizable modern form, featuring circular or oval tracks, with the invention of the mechanical or artificial hare in 1912 by Owen Patrick Smith.

- Wikipedia, the source of all truth! >.>

And the truth is, we're not only not sticking it to The Man, we're actively working FOR him. And we're well worth the 'pay' of our status, and our loot.

Because we run along in front of all the other, newer players who go... wait... if I just work a little bit more, I too can be...!

But it's a rigged game, because a lot of the time, these newer players fail to see the rest of the underlying structure that made us rabbits what we are.

We got in early. We're old players. Who've been playing a long time. We were able to cash in on booms in the economy which are no longer present in a mature game. So even though we didn't spend anything (or spent barely anything)... if you want to match a rabbit today, as a new player... Pay up.

Or sit there wondering why 'these other guys could farm it but I can't'. Then give up. Or pay up. XD

For example, if a newbie wanted to match my toons in Forsaken World today, they wouldn't be able to 'just farm' it all. I'd say at a guesstimate, the combination of both my accounts, if a newbie started playing this week and wanted to be at my power level within that week... conservatively, they'd have to drop about US$4,000 on the game.

That's crazy. But you know, the existence of the rabbits, bounding ahead... if they can run that fast and never get tired... surely I should be able to, too? *chase* *puff* *pant*  *chase* *puff* *pant*

...Ugh! Chasing is hard! I'll pay just a little bit to make things just a little easier.

Congratulations! The F2P game has another new customer, and another potential whale. ;)

Another random thread about BOOBS - Forsaken World Forum

...

Great now I have to get this fashion outfit on my human priest just to see if it really does do that on humans.

(It doesn't on elves - elves all very decently covered.) Well, depending on your definition of 'very' and 'decent'.

._. Which makes me sad because it means I spent 10 minutes zooming in on my elf toon's boobs just to see if I could get that view.

This better not be pshopped. T_T

Ahhaaha. Roped a friend in to test... FOR SCIENCE!

It's not shopped. O.O

First image is screenshot taken by dwarf-me. Second is from friendie. *cackle*

...and my colleagues wonder why I never elaborate on my weekends.

Forsaken World: War of the Ancients Basic Guide

Updated: 7 Jan 2013 - Katze's comments incorporated - Please read them too, they are very helpful!

If this is your first time in WotA, you'll only be able to pick from 2 kinds of 'mob' that you can be. As you gain more ranks, you'll be able to pick from more types of mobs.

At rank 2, the Flagbearer becomes available. The Flagbearer is a melee attacker with a speed boost.

At rank 3, the Conjurer becomes available. The Conjurer is a ranged attacker with a debuff that increases damage done to the target.

At rank 4, the ??? becomes available. The ??? is a melee attacker with a debuff that massively slows a target.


If you only have Warrior and Wizard, pick 'Wizard' - ranged DPS
The Wizard's advantage over the melee 'Warrior' is that it has a much greater range. Especially on boss mobs that come out at every 5th round, this is crucial.

It's advisable to rebind the 2 skills given to you to your normal 1 & 2 hotkeys on your skillbar.

After you pick a mob, you'll be ported into the centre of the instance.

Katze-licious advice:

It's easy to get turned around and lose your way in WA because everything looks the same. Move your toon close to the north entrance and swing your cam appropriately- you can see which way you're facing by looking at the minimap. 

 

How It Works
WotA is basically a tower defence game. Your character's class does not matter, only the mob you pick.

Large purple arrows point towards the direction of the portal mobs waddle gamely towards. Your goal is to kill them all before they get there.

You start off with 30 'Seals'. Every monster that reaches the portal will reduce the Seals by 1. It doesn't matter if the monster is weak, strong, or elite. The exceptions are the Bosses that waddle out every 5 rounds. Each boss does 15 points worth of damage to the Seals.

When your Seals reach 0 (or negative), the instance ends.

As more and more mobs load, what tends to work better is to prioritise killing off the weak mobs. Elites and strongs take much longer to kill, but still do the same amount of damage to the Seals as weak mobs (i.e. 1).

Round 1-4
An instance announcement will be displayed:
E.g. "Alarm: [South] The rift is changing, monsters will appear soon."

This means that monsters are appearing to the south, and going in the directions of the purple arrows towards the portal they want to reach.

Ideally, ranged DPS should be positioned as shown here. This positioning gives you maximum range both on the portal, and if you spin around, on the mobs as they trundle past you, should you fail to kill them all before they walk past.

 

Round 5 onwards

Mobs will now head towards the end portal from 2 directions. An instance announcement will be displayed:
E.g. "Alarm: [Northeast] [Northwest] The rift is changing, monsters will appear soon."

You will need to split your party to deal with the 2 portals. There are 2 possible kinds of splits.

Short Roads to Portal
No purple arrows visible at centre.
Both sets of purple arrows are headed directly towards the Portal, without crossing the centre of the instance.

Strategy
Split into 2 teams of 3 members each. One team will take the first location, the other will take the second.

 


Long & Short Roads to Portal

Purple arrows visible at centre.
Long Road: One set of purple arrows is headed towards the Portal, crossing the centre of the instance.
Short Road: One set of purple arrows is headed directly towards the Portal, without crossing the centre of the instance.

Strategy

  • Split into 2 teams
  • The Short Road team:  4 members, because a shorter road to the Portal means less time to kill.
  • The Long Road team should have 2 members, since they have more time to kill the mobs
  • After the Short Road team is done with their mobs, they should double back to see if the Long Road team needs help

In the screenshot:
Monsters heading from the Northwest to the Southeast are taking the Long Road.
Monsters are heading from the South to the Southeast are taking the Short Road.

 

After round 5's spawns are cleared, the round 5 boss will appear. It is extremely important that everyone be waiting at the gate where he spawns, so that DPS can start immediately.

Use your 2nd skill as much as possible. When you have to run to keep up with the boss, which you eventually will, run while the 2nd skill is on CD. Stop when it's almost off CD so you can fire it off again, pelt him with 1 as much as you can, and repeat.

The round 5 boss is doable with 6 wizards - you don't need anyone rank 2 and above, though of course, it helps. ;)

Rewards
  • Round 5 and 10 bosses each award 10 soul leaves when killed. 
  • Round 5 boss awards an Anima: Shelter (claimable from NPC outside the instance, in Bloodskull camp). 
  • Round 10 boss awards a quest that lets you exchange 30 valor tokens for an Anima: Shelter upgrade item.
  • Round 15 and 20 bosses each award 20 soul leaves when killed. 
  • Round 15 boss awards a quest that lets you exchange 50 valor tokens for an Anima: Shelter upgrade item.
  • Achievement for Round 15: Stand Fast
  • Achievement for Round 20: The Good Fight

 

 

... and that's about it!

Note that each subsequent boss gets harder to kill, and the Round 10 boss miiiiiight be possible with just Wizards, but it's unlikely.

As you get more ranks, and unlock more mob roles, you'll be able to kill more than the Round 5 boss. That goes a bit beyond the basics though, so I won't detail it here.

This is where the group I took all these screenies from ended. =)


Happy hunting!

Forsaken World: They're just so good at ridiculous tartiness.

Before I get people up in arms, that's not equipment - that's fashion, and all of us have chosen to wear it. XD

(The toon on the left is mine.)

Funnily enough, especially as you get to higher levels, the female equipment models in FW tend to cover more skin than the 'epic plate armor'  models in many other MMOs.

So of course, we then have to wear ridiculously silly tarty fashion. Ahem. XD

Forsaken World: Mastery & Resistance

Shankette on Storm server kindly provided me with this info. :) I doubt I'll ever even get to L50 mastery, but I still like to know stuff! Plus now I can stop feeling confused when people wave their L80 mastery around in World Chat.

Mastery levels 1-20, 4 points gained per level, 80 total
Mastery levels 21-40, 6 points gained per level, 114 total
Mastery levels 41-80, 8 points gained per level, 312 total 
Mastery levels 81-100, 10 points gained per level, 190 total

Things to note

  • Points = The point you see on your character sheet.
  • 1 point = 0.1% more outgoing damage from that element / 0.1% less damage taken from mastery from that element.   
  • Maxxing a mastery costs 532D 30g.
  • Maxxing a resistance costs 319D and some g.
  • If we take 1g = US$0.10, then a mastery costs roughly US$5323.00, and a resistance US$3190++.
  • There's some uncertainty as to whether it flips over at 1-19, 20-39, or as I've shown above.
  • For the above calculation, the max points from just mastery training are 696. If we flip over to 1-19 instead, it becomes 702. The actual max from mastery training is reputed to be 700.
  • Please don't kill me if you spend the money needed and what's here isn't quite 100% accurate. O.O
  • Charsheet mastery points can exceed 1000 (e.g. if you have high mastery, add your offhand, your pet, other people's buffs, your soul power... on and on), the actual cap is currently unknown

We are all Junundu nao: 2 months worth of reflections on GW2 (and more)

After 2 months of more or less continuous play (moved to new country, job hunting, etc) the nugget did get 2 toons to 80, three into the 70s in Guild Wars 2, before the crispy golden batter did break down into a hopelessly soggy mass of despair.

Though the nugget originally aimed to give GW2 a 'fair' chance by getting five 80s with 1 of each profession maxxed, the nugget could not do it.

Instead, the formerly-juicy-with-adoration-but-now-soggy-with-sad nugget did log off after her poor ranger hit 80, hasn't logged back on since. (Ok, that's a lieTwice after that! Once to donate money to a poor friend who got hacked, and the other time because I was playing MMO-as-chat-client tag with another friend.)

The funniest - or saddest - thing is, the nuggetty toons weren't even affected by the nerfs that went down at the time. (Same time as ranger shortbow 'animation' nerf.)

Nuggety guardian was a hammer guardian, and nuggetty ranger had JUST changed to sword/dagger + axe/horn PBAOE trapper before the nerf. Literally days before. Which, incidentally, the nugget was rather liking - insofar as the nugget liked any of the gameplay in GW2.

Honestly, the only reason the nugget lasted so long was that her soon-to-be-soggy batter wanted so desperately... not to be underwhelmed and unhappy. Didn't work, but let it not be said that a nugget did not try! XD

1 sentence Nuggetty Review of GW2:
"We are all Junundu nao."


... and now, on to FPN - First Person Nugget!

Achievements - They Aren't All Equal
The saddest part of this for me is that I've lost all faith in ArenaNet. GW was the only game I've loved even 1/3 as much as I loved LegendMUD.

I have no problems with games being a business. I happily play PWE titles, and they are the polar rapacious opposite of what I loved about ArenaNet with regards to Guild Wars and the design philosophy behind it.

One of the hallmarks of Guild Wars was the burning idealism behind it that shaped it into the unique creation it is. It goes beyond the later additions like vanquishing, heroes and then all-hero parties, PvE skills. Those things were icing and evolution both. But the core of Guild Wars was the idea that playing could be fun and rewarding in and of itself. That if given the right platform, people could and would play for fun. That the fun could be the reward, because fun could be creative. That was what really differientated Guild Wars from WoW and all the other rat pellet MMOs I've played.

Don't get me wrong, rat pellets have their place, and I do like them. But they are, at heart, carrot-based. Guild Wars is not. Guild Wars gave me a sense of achievement. It still does when I come up with a build that looks like 'lol that can't possibly work... can eet?' on paper that turns out to be brilliant. Rat-pellet MMOs give me... achievements. ._.

And that's just one of the ways where Guild Wars 2 went wrong. How for the love of all that is crispy and fatty and cholesterol-filled in the world, did ArenaNet go from the sheer brilliance of the fights in War in Kryta to those in Guild Wars 2?

Dragon-slaying 101... Err... I mean... 1111111111111111111111
In Guild Wars: War in Kryta, every mob loaded a random skillbar from a pool, which then synergised anywhere from well to brilliantly with all the OTHER mobs also doing the same thing. And to make things even more hilarious and beautiful, the mobs were using skillbars based on the PvE 'meta' builds of the day. Which meant that prior to the content being nerfed (and even the nerfs were timed well), they couldn't be facerolled with the current PvE metas (in Hard Mode). Instead, fights were full of watching your opponents, adapting on the fly, switching targets fast in some cases, knowing when to spike in others... It's the closest I've ever seen to PvP in any game, and it was utterly fucking beautiful.

...and then in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has you kill dragons by spamming your 1-key (or 2-key), together with a whole horde of other monkeys also spamming their 1-keys.

I know I keep using the word 'heartbreaking', but there it is. :(

Oh Well, the Art Lived Up to the Hype. And You Can Jump.
Guild Wars 2 has none of the burning idealism that makes GW the unique thing it is. While it's certainly a beautiful game (if you don't think about the armour art), taken as a whole, it's definitely neither revolutionary nor unique.

It's not that GW2 didn't bring any improvements, it's that the improvements were far outweighed by the WTFery.


One Step Forward...
You can now jump.
I've seen people say they couldn't play GW because you couldn't jump with the spacebar. While I totally agree that /jump just isn't the same, I've never understood that point of view. Still, there you have it, in GW2, you can jump. With your spacebar.

You can walk over terrain and fall to your death.
Definite improvement - in GW2 you longer have to walk around that tiny kitten sized rock anymore. I liked that.

There's an Auction House, and you can sell from anywhere!
That's great. I wish more auction houses worked like that. It would be even better if you could also pick up from anywhere. Oh and if the auction house fee wasn't so stupidly high... but more about that later...

New graphics engine
Extremely beautiful, no denying it.

Underwater combat
I think I'm one of the few people who actually liked underwater combat - on all 5 of my toons (Guardian, Mesmer, Thief, Elementalist, Ranger). It is revolutionary for underwater combat to obey a different set of rules. From what I can tell, not only are the skills different (duh), but the damage patterns are also different. Unfortunately, the x, y and z-axis are incredibly buggy, and if you pull a mob up or down from the level it loaded on, half the time it goes invulnerable, while your toon, of course, stays all too vulnerable. Not until GW2 did I appreciate the sheer amount of work Blizzard put into underwater in Cataclysm. I don't recall ever EVER getting axis-based evades underwater in Cata.

Nodes for all
No more node-ninjaing! Now work together to get to that node! This was a definite improvement.

Two Steps Back
Fully customisable UI is gone
In Guild Wars you could drag, drop, resize and reposition anything and everything, anywhere you wanted. That's gone like it never was. You're gonna use ArenaNet's 'vision' of what their UI should be, and that's that.

Your screen is full of you
Unless you play an Asura, you'll notice that you're more important to yourself than ever before. No longer can you zoom way out like you can in Guild Wars, for a tactical view of the battle. Nope, you'll spend most of your time looking at yourself, and if you're a Norn or a big Charr... Lol. Reminds me of being in bear form in Sunken Temple back in the day in WoW.

Two upper torsos with heads talking against a backdrop
Gone are the meaningful, in-world cutscenes. I don't think the voice acting has gotten worse, but the whole backdrop thing made the entire experience of watching my toon interacting with NPCs so utterly disconnected that I ended up turning off all voice acting and just reading. When I bothered to read. There is one bright spark though - Tybalt. I loved Tybalt and his apples. XD

Armour design is leaves something to be desired
Guild Wars armour is beautiful from level 1, and every class has a unique look even across all the different variants. No classes share armour skins. It's perfectly possible to mix-and-match a gorgeous set of armour by combining expensive elite pieces with dirt cheap ones. No armour is inferior to any other in looks. In Guild Wars 2 cloth, leather, heavy armour wearers all wear the same sets of skins until you get to the grindy prestige skins. And there is a definite sense that non-prestige skins are not 'worthy' or real art attention and love.

Combat isn't strategic anymore
How did we go from mobs understanding front/mid/backlines, and healer mobs kiting to force you to fight their frontlines, to mobs whose idea of kiting is to run away from you in a straight line about 200 out, and then in a straight line back?
As for the rest ... just scroll back up and re-read the part about War in Kryta vs GW2 dragons, ok? XD

Economy was built with no idea how a F2P game economy works, and none of the finesse needed to wring every last drop of money from a player and have them be okay with it
Yes, I realise you pay for the box, so it's not even strictly F2P. But when 6USD = 1.5g in a system that has gold, silver, and copper, something is wrong. It just doesn't stretch far enough, and it feels like a swindle. Add that to the ridiculous 10-15% (I forget) tax on all items in the AH, and you really start to feel the squeeze. I made enough to buy the upgrades I wanted, sure, but I haven't felt I've had to be this careful about money in a game in years. And as for friends who'd never played anything but GW? Lol - if you have no idea how the usual MMO economy works (e.g. raw mats sell for way more than crafted goods until you have the very high level recipes...) - good luck.

In contrast, while PWE wasn't always as amazing at it as they are now, they learn and evolve. If you play Forsaken World, their newest in-house title aimed at taking a large slice of the English-speaking F2P market... you'll see that they're very very good at not just squeezing money, but deflecting hostility.

A couple of years ago I played another of PWE's in-house titles, Jade Dynasty, and lol. So long after that I still *resent* the US$20 I had to pay for a flying mount so I could continue to level and do content. Fast forward a few years with Forsaken World, where I've dropped US$130 over a year of play, and I'm happy and not at all resentful. These guys are *smart* and they learn *fast*.

ArenaNet, on the other hand, with GW2, seems to have stuck its head in the sand, or up its own arse, singing, 'Lalalala we have a loyal fan base so we know best!' without bothering to even look at how others in the industry are doing things.

Dynamic events are poorly done
GW2's DEs are basically: succeed and restore status quo vs fail and retake 'blah' until you can ... succeed and restore status quo. They are boring, and feel utterly pointless. And they're set up so that if you fail, even though you still get a reward, it *feels* like a failure. The importance of that feeling cannot be overemphasized, because it's one of the reasons why Rift's DEs work much better.

Rift's DEs have (mostly) timer-based stages that you can complete based on whichever DE it happens to be. This means that if you're alone and you want to do a DE (or close a Rift, really, because that's what they tend to be if we leave out Instant Adventures), you can complete as much of the objective that's set before your time runs out, and you successfully close the rift. There are of course some rifts that are very hard to solo (raid rifts), but by and large the ones spawning all over the world follow the pattern above, and by doing so, they grant players what GW2's DEs fail to - satisfaction and the illusion of control.

Teamwork? Lol.
In Guild Wars, I'd group if I felt like being around people, and I've met some cool folks and made good friends that way. In Guild Wars 2, everyone else is basically another NPC that I hope dies before I do. A simple thing like auto-grouping would help so much with this. Time and again in Rift, (which gives you the option to automatically join the DE group and so see people's nameplates, hp, mana, and role...), I've seen people join the group, assess it... and switch talents / builds to fill the gaps they saw. It doesn't have to be requested of them. There are always people who enjoy tanking and/or healing, and if they see that it's needed, *they will do it*.

In Guild Wars, there are so many spells based around buffing other people because it helps your group as a whole. Splinter Weapon and Great Dwarf Weapon are just two in a whole long list. In Guild Wars 2, you have combo fields that you can't even control properly in the zerg that GW2 is.

Working as a team was built into Guild Wars from the ground up. In Guild Wars 2, that concept's just been ground up. =P

Talent trees added, build diversity and flexibility removed
Not only that, but GW2's talent trees are inferior to the talent trees in other games, let alone the system in the original Guild Wars. Don't give me the whole 'switch on the fly' thing. Rift does that too, and much better. With GW2 talent trees, sorry, traits, NO ONE puts 13 points in one thing and 7 in another as an end build. So why does GW2 have points in increments of 1, when only 5s make a difference? Probably to make the 80 levels feel less pointlessly drawn out.

Lore is gone
There's a bit in Nightfall in Guild Wars where you have to answer questions about the gods. I remember being shocked that I could answer them all even though I never really paid attention to the lore while running around killing everything. It just seeped in. I just KNEW. I found that to be an amazing achievement. In Guild Wars 2, erm... the only reason I know which gods are which are because of all my hours in Guild Wars. In fact, there's a bit in GW2 where you ALSO have to answer questions based on the history of Tyria, and the only reason I could answer them was Guild Wars... not GW2. XD

FFS ArenaNet, don't let your devs post on official forums without vetting with PR or a CM first
This thread
is why. I once thought ArenaNet were brilliant not to have official forums. I thought that it was because they realised that in general, fan forums are far more thoughtful and civil. Now I think they were just incredibly lucky - and never realised it. Not only that, but they're locking any threads on the official forums where people are unhappy. Almost every other MMO company out there has learned the hard way not to do that... but I guess ArenaNet knows better, yeah.

System encourages training mobs & inconsideration
...there is a ridiculous amount of mob training in GW2. Go and read this post. It's hilarious, and it has zmobies. Seriously, zmobies and training! How could it get better! (I'd stick with just reading the OP's posts though.)

Lack of Trinity isn't well implemented
If Guild Wars was a lovingly done Magic: The Gathering the MMO, then Guild Wars 2 is a Diablo clone poorly ported to MMO space.

The thing about Diablo clones is that they give players a degree of self-sufficiency that GW2 doesn't. Just because you can quaff a potion the moment the effects wear off doesn't mean that you can stand there and tank everything, all the time. Just that single change - being able to use your utility skill the moment the effects wear off - would make GW2 play much better. As it is, GW2 combat alternates between 1-key mashing while taking no damage, and hoping someone else will take the hits (or dodge them) while your endurance regens and you wait for your utility skill to come off cooldown.


In nuggetty conclusion...
...and I still love Guild Wars.

...and all I have is this long rant. ;)