Changes to the Blue Gloves

[grävling]

It used to be easy to shop for shock gloves around here. The inferior quality shock gloves were called 'shock gloves', while the superior quality ones were the Stunnas and the MT-Tasers, which were equivalent. This is no longer true. Indeed some of you have woken up today with inferior gloves to that which you went to bed with last night!

You now have to read the fact sheet that comes with your gloves very carefully.

We have:
MT Taser Unit (Yakashima)
Power 5, Penetration 5, Accuracy 2, Ammo 0 None, Range 1, AP 3, Speed 4, Y1150
sold at Back Bay Importers, Unified Metals Research

Stunna (AzTek Global)
Power 5, Penetration 4, Accuracy 2, Ammo 0 None, Range 1, AP 3, Speed 4, Y1200
sold at Unified Research Inc

Shock Gloves (Mars, Inc)
Power 4, Penetration 5, Accuracy 2, Ammo 0 None, Range 1, AP 3, Speed 4, Y1250
sold at Mars Inc Surplus Store, Mars Corp Importers, Fairlight Defense HQ

Shock Gloves (Mars, Inc)
Power 4, Penetration 4, Accuracy 2, Ammo 0 None, Range 1, AP 3, Speed 4, Y1050
sold at The Nu-Sword, Logical Tech LLC, Midway Club

Conclusion -- if you don't have a Yakashima MT Taser Unit, take what you have to the pawn shop and replace it with one.

[fallen]

grävling - thanks for the announcement. As we rebalance the field of weapons, this sort of stuff is required at times. You will also notice that the shops of the NBZ have reorganized a bit more.

[LordofSyn]

Are there enough pawn shops left?? lol

[nemesis]

Time to sell off some gear ;D

I wonder if we are going to get bladed weapons for cyberswords who want to slice and dice without the use of combat blades

[Cory Trese]

the question is, do you dislike all the different variations of weapons?

[grävling]

May 30, 2012 0:12:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

the question is, do you dislike all the different variations of weapons?

No, I think that the variety adds depth to the game. I'd be happy if the two different kinds of Shock Gloves (penetration 4s and petration 5s) had slightly different names. And, of course, I want only the best for my girls.

[gravismetallum]

Variety is always good, but in a game everything needs a purpose or its just taking up space. I would suggest tweaking the prices a bit as an incentive for young knights to purchase something less than the best...or you might make the best a bit harder to reach...this theory applies to all your weapons.

In a pnp game with roleplayers a wide variety of weapons caters to the need to have your own unique look... not as important in a video game.

[grävling]

May 30, 2012 4:30:16 GMT -5 gravismetallum said:

Variety is always good, but in a game everything needs a purpose or its just taking up space. I would suggest tweaking the prices a bit as an incentive for young knights to purchase something less than the best...or you might make the best a bit harder to reach...this theory applies to all your weapons.

In a pnp game with roleplayers a wide variety of weapons caters to the need to have your own unique look... not as important in a video game.

I strongly disagree with the 'everything needs a purpose or it is just taking up space' idea. This has been fairly well established in the gaming world. There are players who really are goal focused -- some of them to the near exclusion of everything else. If you give these extremists Myers-Briggs personality tests they tend to test out very high on 'Judging' vs 'Perception' -- i.e. not only do they prefer judging to perception, but they prefer it a whole lot They leave reviews such as 'give me the story already, enough with the micro updates' on Google Play. They want to have goals, external ones, and they want to accomplish them. In many cases they are the people who, when purchasing a game, immediately try to find an on-line walkthrough. It is not so much that they have difficulty finding out things for themselves -- though some of them have such problems, as they do not derrive any pleasure for doing so. They would like everything in a game to have a purpose, and the purpose to be related to one of the on-going tasks they need to solve. They hate loose ends. And they often find the games of, say, Bethesda Softworks too confusing, frustrating, or plain not fun because there is a whole lot of not-relevant-for-the-goal detail. They tend to prefer their games to evolve in a linear fashion, where you have to solve quests in a particular order, and there is no time spend wondering 'what should I do next'? They often want to *finish* [ games, and boast about how they solved all of Oblivion in a weekend, or some such -- meaning that they accomplished all the major tasks in this time. They often replay games with the idea of solving the same problems, but faster, and perhaps from a slightly different perspective.

At the other end of the spectrum are people who are more or less indifferent to goals, or actively hate them, (though possibly not if they came up with the goals themselves). They test out on the Myers-Briggs test as highly Perceptive -- not only do they prefer Perception over Judging in their daily lives, but they strongly do so. They find linear structure in games, and the need to do quests in a particular order so personally loathesome that the game would have to have some other overwhelming attraction for them or else they will become bored and unhappy and quit. Some of them have spent many, many happy months exploring the worlds of games such as those made by Bethesda Softworks without even knowing that there was an over-riding game *plot* that you were supposed to solve. When you mention this to them, they frequently tell you that they do not care about it, because they are way too busy and wrapped up in whatever fun they have made for themselves. They love loose ends, and keeping things open. 'Pointless exploration', far from being something frustrating, is a joy to them. They also hate performing actions that close off certain developments for their characters, and really agonise over such choices. For these people the richness is in the detail of the experience, and how deep it appears to be. Relevance to the task at hand is less important , even unimportant to them -- if the experience is interesting enough, the task will be tossed in order to prolong the experience. These people only use walkthroughs to find out if they have missed something interesting. The notion that you would want to 'finish the game quicker' is something they find particularly hard to understand -- they don't so much 'finish' games, as find that some new game has captured their interest, and their time.

Now most people live somewhere between these extremes. They like to have some goals, but they hate to have their whole experience mapped out and structured for them ahead of time.

As a game developer it is hard to cater to both groups at the same time. But what we have right now is an incredibly detailed and rich world. Thus it is already appealing to those who are more Perception than Judging focused. We're the ones who enjoy this place, even though there really aren't any goals at all except for those that you make yourselves. And having lots of stuff in the stores is a part of that. It makes it feel like a real world. The purpose of the inferior shock gloves is to make money for Mars Corporation. If everything in the game has a purpose -- from the point of view of the CK who is following a narrative -- then the thing becomes rather too ego-centred and shallow. You catch yourself looking at objects in stores with the eye to 'why did the developer make one of these things'?

You end up with the experience you have when reading poorly written mystery novels -- who-done-its , where you can figure out who the murder is by asking the question 'Why did the author include this character in the story?'. The person whom you cannot come up with a convincing answer for is the murderer. It rather ruins the fun of the thing, but you cannot help yourself from doing it anyway.

So the purpose of these things, is, well, that they don't have a purpose from the point of view of the player character, beyond being more stuff to explore. If you start streamling things and making it 'purposeful', well, you probably won't catch the pure-Judgers among the gaming community. They are all playing Dungeon Hunter 2, or something linear like that. But you will diminish the quality of expereince for those who like their gaming worlds rich and detailed -- and since I think this is the real strength of the TB games, I think this would be a terrible shame.

But I am pretty sure that gravis didn't mean 'have a purpose' in quite such a limited sense, as well. It is just that this particular phrase puts me on a soapbox. I've seen far too many good projects fail because they were taken over by somebody who was so 'goal oriented' than the entire imagination space was gutted as being 'unproductive'. But I will get off my soapbox now. Thank you for listening.

[gravismetallum]

Lol, I was just talking about equipment not the story. I love sandbox games and spend lots of time randomly exploring ( I still havnt beat skyrim). My point is that this is a strategy game as well as an rpg, so equipment that we spend hard earned cash on should have a "niche" purpose, as far as arrows pointing me places... I really don't need them. I guess what I'm suggesting could be considerd a balance for your case studies? ;D

Your soapbox is a scary place and I hope not to have to argue any points with you.

[grävling]

Balance for my case studies, maybe.

I don't think that my soapbox is that scary a place. It is just that the open ended types are plenty aware that they may have to limit scope (alas) to get a release out, and that there comes a time when, while not perfect, it is good enough to ship.

Those who delight in narrowing optiions, and who think that the earlier a decision can be made the better, and who have never liked uncertainty whereever it is found -- they can kill your company silently. Because they see all that they do as being virtuous, and have a hard time seeing the link between 'this was a bad decision we made' and 'you made it too early, indeed at the earliest possible moment you could make this decision. If you had delayed, we would have had more information to use to make the decision, and it would have been a better one.'

Most of my life is spent teaching people who have no talent for it, the second. It's unpleasant work.

(Hence the need to go off and kill things... :-) )

take care all,
Grävling

[nemesis]

May 30, 2012 0:12:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

the question is, do you dislike all the different variations of weapons?

The stun pistols are a nice touch and I do enjoy all the new weapons ;D

I do only have one comment though. Since most penetration stats for the stun pistols is 2 it takes around 2-3 shots to take a person down. Its going to take awhile for me to get the hang of the new system since I'm playing Female II. I get ganked now when I try to stun opponents to submission

[grävling]

Now that we have real Tasers in the game, to avoid confusion, maybe the Yakashima MT Taser Unit should be renamed the Yakashima MT Taser Glove ? ?

[Cory Trese]

Jun 3, 2012 13:07:44 GMT -5 grävling said:

Now that we have real Tasers in the game, to avoid confusion, maybe the Yakashima MT Taser Unit should be renamed the Yakashima MT Taser Glove ? ?

Good call.