Posts Tagged ‘combat’

The First Twenty Hours: Rusty Hearts Review

7 October 2011 | No Comments » | Randy Denosha

Rusty Hearts, currently in Open Beta, is being crafted by Stairway Games in conjunction with Perfect World Entertainment. PWE should sound familiar. The growing Chinese company is responsible for publishing multiple titles on this side of the pond, including Perfect World and Forsaken World. Rusty Hearts is a massive multi-player, fast paced brawling game. Confused? Check out iTZKooPA’s introductory video from a few weeks back

Go, I’ll wait.

After spending about twenty hours in the game I am still going and haven’t hit the cap yet (considering that on October 11 the cap will get raised to thirty). I gave all three playable character a spin, the fourth has yet to unlock.

Character Selection: So let’s dive right into the character selection screen. Immediately when you have chosen your server you wanna play on you’ll see four different characters walking. Each of them use one of two weapons they start with and at level 10 they gain the skill to use the second. Frantz uses a sword or axe, Angela uses a magic sword or scythe and Tude uses gauntlets or claws. You choose one of these characters. There is no customizing whatsoever though (customizing happens in game in the form of costumes). It’s an unusual twist for an Eastern-developed game to lack initial customization. The change in schema is was made to allow Rusty Hearts to focus on character development by way of story.

E3 2011: Pre-show Trailers: Wakfu Combat

7 June 2011 | 1 Comment » | pixiestixy

The official start of E3 is only a few hours out, and still we’re seeing more exciting new footage hitting the interwebs in anticipation. This time, we have a combat trailer from the tactical fantasy MMO Wakfu, an offshoot from DOFUS under development by Ankama Games and published by Square Enix.

Aside from a slightly annoying announcer in the video, the actual gameplay looks catchy and something a bit different than the direction that most MMOs take, although similar to that of DOFUS. Wakfu currently is in open beta and is slated for a release later this year.

Ronix Rants – Get em’ by the balls…their hearts and minds will follow

13 May 2011 | 3 Comments » | Ronix

Disclaimer: The views of the writer in no way match the views of rest of the Lore Hound crew. In fact, they are just as disturbed by this post as you are.

People like to dabble in role-playing, right? We automatically assume certain roles in our day-to-day interactions, we occasionally imagine ourselves as different characters living in fictional universes, we role-play during sex… and where was I? Oh yes, role-playing.

Today, I’m going to role-play an armchair game designer. And not just any game designer, but a jaded, angry, border-line maniacal fellow who wants to bludgeon you with a vicious-ass trout. Get ready because this is going to be a rant of sorts, and boy, do I have an axe to grind.

Recently, a number of gaming-related portals have posted PvP Impressions for Star Wars: the Old Republic. Turns out, the new mechanics in the game allow fights to last longer due to a lack of burst damage at mid-levels, an anti-crowd control measure for each class and an unusual approach to tanking. With regards to the latter, in most MMORPGs, the various taunts and aggro-related skills for tanks only work in PvE, with no consequence for enemy players. However, SW:TOR’s PvP mechanics make active use of those skills by having a slightly different effect. A taunted player, for example, will do -50% less damage to everyone besides the person who put the effect on him. Another example is the guard ability, which will allow tanks to take damage instead of enemies.

SWTOR seems to be taking a page from Warhammer Online, which has made use of some of the mentioned tanking mechanics for PvP. There is ‘nothing’ wrong in borrowing good ideas from other sources, provided they can be implemented into your game, right? Right. What really strikes me as odd are the people writing about their SW:TOR experience and commenting how fresh these mechanics felt. Come again? Continue Reading

Launch Battlestar Galactica Online? – Y/N

11 April 2011 | 4 Comments » | Ronix

Fans of MMOGs set in space can (sort of) rejoice – yet another contender for their time and attention has entered the ring. Battlestar Galactica Online is a browser-based MMOG, currently in open beta, set in an alternative universe of a popular IP of the same name. Brought to life by Bigpoint, in conjunction with Artplant, the game was developed using the Unity Engine. Is BigPoint’s new title a relevant entry in the increasingly popular space setting and does it do justice to the IP it is based on? Read on to get some initial impressions.

The first thing you notice is that the title looks great for a browser game. You can witness some really nice art assets, as well as imaginative and vivid portrayals of space. Gameplay systems present in BGO are pretty standard for an MMOG. You get your quests from NPCs located inside the stations scattered throughout the game world.  The main storyline arc is driven through special missions, but players can opt to skip them altogether and dive straight into gameplay and exploration. However, once the main line of quests is over, you are left to grind only a handful of daily missions. Doing this can quickly get repetitive, so skipping the main narrative isn’t recommended.

However, PvE isn’t the only experience that BGO has to offer.

Continue Reading

Black Prophecy – Cinematic Tutorial and Basics

7 March 2011 | No Comments » | Ronix

Welcome back to the second entry in the video series covering Black Prophecy. Check out the introduction post for more information on the title and a quick look at the character creator. This time, join me in this video as we get through the cinematic tutorial, explore combat and gameplay mechanics, as well as go over the interface.

Gear Check: Gearing your Rogue for Heroics and Raiding in Cataclysm, Part 2

2 March 2011 | No Comments » | Heartbourne

Get the right gear and you'll be able to take on Mathias Shaw.

Last time, we broke down all the gear you can get via reputation rewards and dungeon/heroic drops. Let’s run the delicious gear rogues can get from crafting, Justice and Valor points.

For Engineers, you’ll definitely want to pick up your Agile Bio-Optic Killshades. They are better than anything you’ll see in heroics and well beyond. The materials aren’t cheap and you’ll need to run heroics to get a Chaos Orb, but hey, nothing is free.

All Assassination rogues should seriously consider getting Belt of Nefarious Whispers. It’s one of the only leather items with hit and mastery, a golden combination that you don’t even need to reforge unless you are really overboard on hit (unlikely at this point). It got sockets in patch 4.0.6, making it even worthier. You’ll need quite a few mats and pay a Leatherworker well for their 2 Chaos Orbs.

Assassin’s Chestpiece has an unfortunate amount of crit on it, though the hit is nice. If you really want to squeeze out a little more DPS you can pick it up, but again, it ain’t cheap, especially with three (!) Chaos Orbs required. Continue Reading

A Quick Look at Bloodline Champions

24 February 2011 | 2 Comments » | Ronix

Hello and welcome to a short preview of Bloodline Champions – an arena-based PvP game, where you actually have to aim your attacks and spells in order to hit an opponent. The game is published by Funcom and developed by a Swedish company called Stunlock Studios. Today, we are going to play a quick match, as well as take a look at the game’s cash shop.

For those of you who don’t know what Bloodline Champions is, think of it as a DotA-type game, without the actual features of DotA such as creeps, and farming for loot and equipment in order to stay competitive. In the places of those features, add a dash of Diablo-style combat mechanics and you get a game that is actually skill-based and much more PvP-orientated.

Warning: the force is not strong with this one.

Please keep in mind that (for some weird reason) my cursor was not shown in the final footage. Also, warning you now about the mic quality, so no complaints :) As a result of this, I’ve decided to leave the last two minutes of the video (that covers the cash-shop of the game) without narration. Its pretty straight-forward though, so you’ll be able to judge for yourself what the item-mall is like.

Gear Check: Gearing your Rogue for Heroics and Raiding in Cataclysm, Part 1

4 February 2011 | 4 Comments » | Heartbourne

Cataclysm has brought on a lot of changes for rogues. Subtlety may again see the light of day as a PvE spec, Hunger for Blood is replaced by Vendetta, and weapon specializations taken away from Combat just to name a few changes. This post will help you determine what gear you will want to go after in the endgame, and what you should be looking for while leveling.

The first thing you want to keep in mind are what stats you are going to want for heroics and raiding. While this doesn’t matter much for questing, if you are leveling in dungeons or preparing to do heroics, you should start looking to build your set while you are leveling.

Stat Weightings

With reforging, you can move some of your gear’s stats around. It’s important to know what stats you are looking for and reforge the stats that aren’t very good for you into better ones.

For Combat, this is what you are looking at:

Agility >> Hit (pre yellow cap) >> Expertise (pre cap) > Haste > Hit > Crit > Mastery

Basically, agility is way better than everything else, hit is way better than other things until the yellow cap, then hit and haste are about equal, but both better than crit and mastery.

Your hit information can be obtained by going into your character stats sheet. At level 85, here are the caps assuming you picked up 3/3 precision:

  • Yellow: 241 (2%)
  • Spell: 1127 (11%)
  • White: 2523 (21%)

Basically, hit rating is really good until the yellow cap, then its about as good as haste and expertise. It stays about that good up until the white hit cap, at which point it is useless. You won’t be anywhere near that number, so don’t worry about it too much. Expertise is capped at 781 for most races; if you have a racial that increases your expertise with your weapons (like Gnomes or Orcs), you are looking at 691.

A note on weapons: You are going to want a slow main hand and a fast offhand. The type of weapon doesn’t matter (unless you have a racial bonus), but the only fast offhands are daggers, so put a 1.4 speed dagger there.

Read on for the full list of gear you will want. Continue Reading