Month: December 2015

Black Ops 3, Call Of Duty, CoD

CODPoints views

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CODPoints views

Recently Call of duty black ops 3 has added into the game CODPoints which is currency designed to be used on loot based items.  Crypto keys/liquid divinium can be exchanged for supply drops / gobble gum.  Supply drops give you cosmetic items and gobble gum small buffs when you play zombies.  Given the success of supply drops in advance warfare was obvious system like this was on the way.   Still annoyed it been added into the game and just another cash cow.

Understand studios need to make money but this is the biggest selling game of all time.  Most games add systems like this couple months after release so they can keep supporting them.  Feel like microtransactions have got out of hand and value side of things is low when comes to this deal.

Journal

10 days until Christmas

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10 days until Christmas

Reflections on Christmas

Middle of winter subject to series of ancient holidays,  Christmas is just another one taking many traditions from the holidays.  For centuries people celebrated winter solstice light and birth in the darkest days of winter.  Worse of winter is over people could look forward, longer days and extended sun lights. Why end of December perfect time for celebration for Europe. Live stock was killed during this time to avoid being feed and perfect time to eat stockpiled food.  Most interesting celebration was done for centuries across various cultures and societies.  No longer face the same problems when it comes to food supply slowly whole thing has become more about reflection. Traditions has not died out if anything become even stronger still gather together to keep warm and eat.  Christianity lost control of Christmas in drive of getting it more accepted as the main holiday.

Do enjoy Christmas brings about great deal of reflection.

Middle east…..

Christianity has important place within history of the middle east.  Long term Christianity is suffering from major decline result of political turmoil, high emigration rates, persecution.  Unlikely things are going to change any time soon.  Peaceful existence in many nations has disappeared with expected numbers likely to half at the end of the decade.  Unhelpful talk of relocation with nations reaching wanting only to take in this select group of refugees.

Like many share some of the same values Christianity find this view worrying.

Christmas gifts are always nice but lets not forget the humble beginning and message.

Call Of Duty, CoD, Playstation, PS4, Video Games

Black Ops 3 Weapon Tuning

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Recently Black Ops 3 has been updated with some weapon tuning.

Little bit confused why some of the tuning was done against some obvious balances issues. Studio is using various bits of data to make choices collecting player feedback have some faith given current meta. Treyarch has done decent job overall but issues between classes in my mind.  What do I know end of the day not very much only have small minor opinion.

Light on real numbers again but that normal for most studios.

Given some information which can be found here Weapon tuning

Normal sources should have the real numbers within couple of days/weeks.

Video Games

Destiny my opinion

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Destiny has been plagued with issues players complaining about game being incomplete information coming from so called ex employees and current employees confirms. Lawsuit have been filled from ex employees saying they suffered from mistreatment with their work not being used. Game left players confused felt half baked with content missing, some users was able to find content had been cut which later turned up in expansions.
Bungie did a complete rework of bunch of voices, redid bunch of gameplay mechanics tried to explain story more during taken king expansion. References to events which did not happen was found appears the game much bigger scope but was unable to meet deadlines. Suffered from poor project management with deadlines forcing ideas to be cut or left unfinished who knows.
Safe to say that Destiny had rough start not many studios would do so much work after launching a title. Only game which comes to mind would be battlefield 4 which still being rebalanced and updated.
Bungie has been detailing it second year plans focus being on events over expansions. Given the amount of effort they put into building expansions plus complete over haul of the game not a surprise.

Before we go any further my experience with Destiny was just the beta.
Playing the beta felt like the game lacked variety, with potential content being thin on the ground plus lacking story. Destiny should had events weekly with different content and new content areas for players to experience with loads of variety.
Hope for Destiny 2 we see some serious variety with serious content plus bunch of community items which basic MMOs have. Before any expansions even appear and when they do offer 50+ hours of content.

Maybe Bungie was trying to do bite size AAA style games who knows.

Destiny felt like half baked shooter with MMO/RPG system that was never finished..
Based on the unconfirmed information from ex employees appears to be correct.

Have no desire to play Destiny when other games do what destiny offers better.

Call Of Duty, CoD, Video Games

Zombies – Teach me your ways…

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Couple days ago somebody asked me….

How did you get so good at zombies? 

Okay they asked different question but was asking the above.

Answer: Using the game mechanics to my advantage and bending the rules to suit me.

Call Of Duty zombie mode comes down to map knowledge, understanding mechanics and being efficient.  Loads of practise with patience helps in understanding the mechanics and map knowledge.

Good at black ops 3 version due to having the same mechanics as BO2/1 and even WAW when it comes to key behaviours.

Sure you seen some of my gameplay but have you noticed the patterns?

Zombies have certain path pattern and behaviour which I exploit combined with other mechanics so always one step ahead.  Understand the rules the game has given me now using them to my advantage to give me extra time to react and think.  What you don’t see is my decision making process which is harder to explain and comes with practise.  Basic version making choices based on the information at hand working out risk and safe routes on the fly.

Rules/mechanics in call of duty are simple just a case of decision making and map knowledge which makes players good or bad.

Willing to explain thinking if you wish and why I’m doing it 🙂

Of course watch some Youtube videos see what they done different some people are far more efficient compared to myself.  In fact still learning the most efficient ways of using the maps.

Practise makes perfect….

And look out for any live streams from myself ^_^

Call Of Duty, CoD, Video Games

Shadows Of Evil – bad design

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Shadows Of Evil – bad design

Let’s talk about Shadows of evil…….

Highest round so far is 22 with 4 players.  Group came from reddit trying to help me to complete the easter egg together.   Majority of my time played with random public players [ZOMG how can you do that!].   Enjoy trying to keep people alive and survival element of zombies.  In the past been able to get to high rounds 35+ on most maps with random players and even groups I know are decent.  Just find it rather boring playing solo or groups decent players apart from getting easter eggs.

Enjoy Shadows of evil but do find map rather frustrating when playing with random players.  Bad design is to blame firmly at pack a punch.

Pack a punch – Not fan of the design behind opening of pack a punch.  Need to collect 4 pieces, complete rituial avoiding any zombies during the process, open up rift and open up the door.   Trying to complete these steps with random players quite challenge very quickly becomes rather hard to complete.  From my experience just not worth trying to complete until players are dead.

Would like to see Treyarch change how rituials work so they are not required to open up pack a punch.  Could always rework the pricing of the doors required that is another option on the table.

Do like the map but loads of frustrating parts which become no go zones and rather hard to keep players up.  Result most people go into death cycle and quit.  Need pack a punch in order to get pass the group of zombies who killed your teammate at certain rounds.  Far easier to let players die over revive them. Due to how the map is designed can’t loop around to pick up teammates.  Loads of tight areas which force you into the zombies, even at rounds 10-15 that can be death sentence. Players often get into death cycle with no way of getting out of it.  Throw in zombie health increases per round upgraded weapon becomes required at certain level.

Map requires you to think is it worth the risk to revive that player most of the time 60% not worth it.

Would be nice if was given more tools to help revive players and more options to get out of the death cycle.  Say free weapon after certain round or gobble gum.

Video Games

First person shooters – stagnant mechanics no more?

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First person shooters – stagnant mechanics no more?

Number of years now had stagnant mechanics, no massive jump but nice switch up over stagnant ideas in last 2 years. Straight up clone of old ideas won’t work due to platform control differences but got happy median. Genre focus has started to turn back old ideas focus on many elements which many players never experienced.  Trends have for seen these ideas and design come back into the fold.  Implemented differently due platform releases player control input changes how things work.  Keyboard & Mouse allows players to aim at the same time have great control over recoil.  Movement players have great control no hard limits on movement speed.  Call Of Duty advanced warfare being recent example game was super fast on PC but slower on console due controller limits.

Doom reboot is coming with old school arena style design.

Black Ops 3 changed movement system

Titanfall had own take on movement mechanics

List goes on and on….

Studios are clearly wanting to use every paint pot instead just grey and brown.

Do love the artists willing to try everything.

Could we be seeing the end of modern military shooters?

Stagnant mechanics of past  modern military shooters appear to be slowly changed one by one. Instead it other genres which are suffering from stagnant mechanics like open world games.