Much like this blog, UOPF has not seen a lot of action from me lately. I mostly log-in long enough to keep my accounts active grab a BOD (never anything good), and check my vendor (check but not restock :/). As much as I love UOPF, it's just not offering me anything right now that I'm interested in. I've done most of what I can with Valishan for the time being, without investing a lot more time into things that won't make that great of an impact.
The only other thing I've considered is trying a 700-point challenge, with a third account. The wall to that is that my second account still needs to GM two or three *really* annoying skills, Mining being the main one. UOPF's skill gain system is horrible for Mining and I wish they would be rid of it. From a logical standpoint, it doesn't track.
Movement/target based skill-gain is supposed to encourage active playing versus macroing, yet they not only allow macroing on UOPF but even facilitate it by providing macros and areas specifically designed for macroing skills. Yeah.
In Mining's case, it works out that you can gain .3 skill before having to move at least 5 steps so you can gain again (3 gains (usually at .1 skill) per 5x5 grid). The trouble comes in that there's no real rhyme or reason to this system. It doesn't encourage active play over macroing when there are macros/scripts for Razor/EUOX provided. For a skill like Fishing, movement gain does make sense because there's a certain logical element to it; in the real world, fishing in different areas provides different fish, requires different bait, etc., things that we can imagine our character 'just does' as an inherent to the skill. It doesn't make logical sense that hitting rock in a different spot would increase a person's skill. If it were difficulty based, starting at 65 skill you would have to mine dull copper ore to continue gaining but that would make it unnecessarily hard on the player and create competition for mining spots among players. As it turns out, for your skill to increase it doesn't matter *what* you're mining on PF so long *as* you're mining; how does forced movement *really* mesh with that?
From what I've heard from staff, the entire 5x5 system that UOPF uses is designed to prevent players from getting full GM characters in one night and create a "difficulty" to skill gain, neither of which would be necessary if they didn't design things to make it easier to GM skills in an hour or so like increasing skill gain over production UO rates.
IT BOGGLES.
But enough about that. Aside from my classes, which are done for the time being, I've been occupying my time with other games, which I've considered blogging about. One of them I believe I will, in fact.
The first thing that had me for a while was Pokemon White; being a collector sort of person, the idea of completing that Pokedex is pretty compelling. Trouble comes in that I have no one to trade with around me, killing my White Forest, and that trading online is ridiculous. I've caught all that I can in-game and I've managed to trade for a few with GTS, but I'm pretty much done for now. I considered grabbing HG/SS for the last 100 or so that I need, but I dunno that I care to invest that much into things with B/W 2 coming.
Next up was DDO; I don't have a lot to say about that one except lolcashshop and that any Valishan not on Galandreal (or whatever it was) is not me. I was stunned to see that there's another one out there, though. So much for being unique.
More recently, I was running some Atlantica Online. I didn't go with Valishan there, and thankfully so because there's actually a boss/instance for "Alishan." AO is a pretty enjoyable game for the most part; I like the tactical aspect of things and the community is easily one of the best I've ever seen for an online game. I haven't run into any 13 year-olds or "13 year-olds" cursing everyone and everything that doesn't go their way, so that's instantly a win for me. I largely quit online gaming for a while because of that stuff and it ultimately killed my love for FPS's entirely (though I do have such beautiful nostalgia about UT... le sigh).
Playing DDO and AO, both F2P games, is a great way to see a well-designed cash shop and a horrible cash shop implemented. I'll explain how this relates remotely to UOPF in a moment.
The Horribad: In DDO, you start with some severe F2P limits; limited character creation, few character slots, few adventure packs, 1 auction at a time, gold limits by level, etc., etc. As you play, you can earn "Turbine points" which are used in the cash shop, while some things will simply be unlocked as you progress. On paper, this sounds like a decent deal since you can ultimately gain the same things playing for free that some people will pay for. Except, you can't. The costs are ridiculous and how many points you can gain is limited per character.You gain these points for finishing adventures which, if you were reading to succeed, are limited for free players; sure, you can get to max level with what they give, but it's a long and time consuming, grindy process. To make that less of a pain, you can use the points you earn to buy... adventure packs. To earn more Turbine points. If you're doing that, however, you're not spending your points on strong build options or other races and classes, and the like.
Also, don't make a mistake when making your characters on DDO; you get one free feat respec, then you have to farm uncommon items or buy them from the AH, *and* spend a lot of coin for the respect. Resetting your enhancements (a DDO-exclusive addition to standard D&D character building) doesn't require items, but does require some coin. Or you could skip all that and, you guessed it, use TP to buy one of a variety of character reset items.
These are just a few examples, but suffice to say that actually doing the math on all the cash shop stuff versus my limitations without spending real money was enough to have me quit, probably for good.
The Much Better: AO's cash shop, as far as I can tell, is far better designed. There isn't anything sold there that you can't get in-game, as far as I'm aware. The things sold are not completely "be better than everyone else" type items, but instead shortcuts to being the best. It's far from perfect, but it's easily one of the best cash shops I've seen in my F2P experience.
It does, however, build in a really smart (for Nexon) gimmick; when you buy things from the cash shop, you're generally buying a chance to gamble. One big thing in the game are boxes; when you use a box, you generally get one of a list of items that may or may not actually be useful. Some boxes will drop more than one item or let you choose from the list, but the majority of them are a crap shoot; you could get something useful or you might not. You buy similarly designed boxes from the cash shop. This is lol-worthy, because it's pretty much a mind trick; people are spending money for the chance of a money-worthy item, and if they'll do it once they'll probably do it again if they don't get what they want and/or something new and better comes out. It's just brilliant enough to make money and dissuade me from ever even considering paying for anything in AO, despite my enjoyment of the game.
For UOPF: With the exception of the donation weapons, I think UOPF is mostly on the good side of the cash shop spectrum. The majority of the things they offer are shortcuts and exclusive deco that doesn't really impact game balance. The weapons, of course, are where I feel it totally screws up game balance, but hey, nothing is perfect.
The last thing taking my time, most recently and still consuming, is of course Diablo 3. This is the one I'm thinking of blogging about simply because I'm putting a lot of effort into it (read: Math) and I'd like to potentially share that with others. I also think I'm going to have a lot to say about it, not like many people on the Battle.net forums (I hope) but more like hopes and ideas for improvement (for me). Whether I do that here or on its own blog is still up in the air.
