Gaming in 2016 ?

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Armored Warfare, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Master of Orion, Pokemon Go, World of Tanks, World of Warships

What will gaming bring me in 2016 ?   I’m not sure, but here are my guesses :

Games I’m Playing Right Now :

Ingress – At some point I’m going to be completely done with the game and cease to log in.    Changes in game mechanics might tweak that.   For instance, better key mechanics, such as unlimited key storage or use of keys inside the capsules you’ve purchased; or real defense, that actually stops an attacker flat, or server priority for defense instead of offense.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fantastic game, but it just looks like for me, Doc Burbank, I’m done.

Marvel Heroes – A name change is coming in a few days and it will magically be Marvel Heroes 2016 !    This amuses me, because you usually associate name changes with big feature changes.   I’m aware of nothing new coming besides the changed name and the usual game tweaks.

But Gazillion is impressive.   They apparently took a total turd at launch time, and much like Everquest 2, improved it over time until it’s becoming a real gem.    Achievements.   Danger Room.   More heroes.   Midtown Madness.    Cosmic Levels.    More currencies than you can shake a stick at, which after a while, you get used to and enjoy having.    I really like this game, although my interest waxed and waned over the last several months.

Best guess is this will get played to some degree all year.   It’ll probably cost me money for something – Heroes, Bank Slots, or Costumes.   God help me if I start buying costumes, you could blow hundreds of dollars on that stuff.    I remain about $40 invested in the game, but I’m tempted to buy more.

World of Warships – This is fun, but I’m very low on ship slots and not that interested in spending more money.     And so this killed the game for me.    I haven’t logged in for a month or so…. but I’d like to.     Unified accounts (like were originally promised) would probably revive my interest and convince me to spend “Wargaming Gold” on new ship slots and continue playing.

And the other reason I don’t play this is because, simply put, I’d rather play tanks.

World of Tanks – More tanks to play and unlock.    Marvel shouldered this one aside again and I assume I’ll be putting in matches once again soon, after the Marvel winter event.    Best guess is this gets playtime in chunks throughout 2016.

Adventure Capitalist – This barely counts as something played, but oh well.   I enjoy accumulating my quattorquindecillion’s worth of money.    But given the low level of daily play (1 minute?) I will probably continue logging in for the entire year.

Games On My Radar :

My Steam Library – Just like the rest of nerd gaming-dom, I have a large library of games I’ve lightly or never played on Steam.    I was not the slightest bit tempted to buy anything over the Holiday sale.   Far too much has been purchased and not played, and yet, odd as it is, it was enjoyable to search out all those bargains and buy them.   If I never play them, I got some amusement out of the whole process and learned something new – the joy of buying things for its own sake.   (My wife knows all about this phenomenon….)

Star Ruler 2 comes to mind, along with Wasteland 2 and Dino D-Day (Ridiculous idea !  Fun as hell !   Will the game match up at all?)  as games I’ve not played for any good reason.    Cities : Skylines is the one I want to play the most, and yet, I’ve never logged in and played the game.   City builders have been so dissapointing over the years after Simcity 4’s massive goodness – and irritating problems – and yet the premise still seems fun.

Regicide sounds interesting as I continue to wait for a Battle Chess game to pass across my radar, but I was after a sub $10 price point.   It’s at $10 during the Steam sale.

Star Wars : SWTOR – this has gone free-to-play, and I admit, I’ve read very little about it.   But I am intrigued enough to perhaps try it out in the free-to-play world.   If I had to pay for it like at release time it would be a definite no go.

Armored Warfare should get another try.    Maybe they can improve the queueing time to the point I’d actually like to play.   I don’t know.

Games To Be Released :

Pokemon Go – This sounds like it might be fun.    Travel to different spots in Meatspace, and collect various Pokemon.    Fight virtual battles.   Level up your Pokemon at a Gym, and acquire powers.    Trade with other players, not a very exciting concept, since in practice this usually doesn’t work that well and ruins a game.   Maybe this will be different.   Expected release date is “2016”

Master of Orion – Can Wargaming move forward and publish this one well ?    Did they pick the right studio to develop with NGD ?   Time will tell.    The real question is, was it just the first really good 4X in space so it’s remembered fondly, or is there something about the experience that will stand out during a remake ?   I really, really hope it’s the latter, although I’m enough of a fanboy that I bet I’m buying the thing on release day no matter what.  No release date is hinted at.   Hopefully it’s 2016 sometime but you never know.

Now, I can look back next year and see how well these ideas stacked up with whatever happens during the year.

Gaming Update – So Many Games

Tags

Ingress, World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, World of Warships

Gaming progress for the last week includes :

Ingress : Double AP until December 1 is being very kind to me.   Sometime this weekend I hope to make Level 14, and an important fellow agent just made 16 with the boost.

• 1.5 million MU captured
• 40k Translator (Glyphing) points, means 10,000 to go until the way is clear to 16.

I enjoyed making this field, 2K MU, but it was just such a long and large blocking field as well.

Warplanes : Hawk 75M purchased and fully upgraded, and continuing to accrue the XP for the F2A.   All other aircraft (Tier I mostly) are elited.   I am avoiding purchasing more stuff until I know more about the grind, or elite one of those two aircraft.

Warships : My fleet includes the Dresden and Hermelin (German II and I) ships.   I like the Germans for some reason I haven’t carefully analyzed.   The Americans are the tree I’m planning to fully explore, and I own 5 ships there, mostly working to elite the St Louis cruiser.

I figured out how to play the Sampson destroyer after a lot of false starts.   The torpedos have a tiny range, so you have to sneak up on other ships or wait for them to move near, fire torpedos, and take evasive action.   Generating smoke helps keep you hidden.   Most of the time when I get near a ship, they fired torpedos at me, and had a good kill rate.   I don’t think Destroyers are my kind of ship, but who knows.  I did manage to elite it, but I’m not buying the next one immediately at least.

I haven’t played my starter Battleship (South Carolina) yet.

Tanks : AT2 elited and removed from the grind list.   That is a TD very much my style.    Still grinding away otherwise.   E-75 (German Heavy), The Toaster (German TD), AMX 46 (French TD), Chi-Nu (Japanese Medium), and the B1 (French Heavy) round out the list.    I’m kind of afraid to play the E-75 since I lose 10k credits every match, usually.   Still need more than 100k XP for the E-100 unlock.   I must not play the AMX 46 very well since I often lose credits, and I’m still playing this thing after such a long time.

The B1 is hysterical to play as a stock tank.  It can’t pen ANYTHING at all.   Not a Tier 3 scout from the rear.   Enemies were nervous about me until they realized I was stock and then chewed me up and spit me out.   But I persevered, did not spend free XP, and managed to get all the gear upgrades and am now working on the next tank.   I don’t know – I might end up enjoying this one.   We’ll see.   56% crew means there’s nowhere to go but up.

The weekend special is 50% off Tier 4-5 heavy tanks (none for me), and 30% of Tier 6-7.  For me, this means the KV-85 is on sale.   Bought, and stocked away.

What’s Wargaming been up to ?

Tags

Armored Warfare, World of Tanks, World of Warships

I’ve not really kept up with Wargaming since traveling to Ingress – obviously.  I missed the launch of Warships for crying out loud – so over the last day I’ve been digging around.

World of Tanks, Nov 2015

A lot of the game is the same old, same old.    This is good and bad, and a few things really jump out at me :

• Premium accounts are ridiculous.
• Paying $50 for a tank is ridiculous.
• Individual matches never get old.
• The default skins are sooooo boring.
• The game’s graphics are just beyond fantastic.

I seem to have bought too many tank slots.   Somewhere between ?10? for a new account, and 153 which is my current total (12 slots free), is a more sweet spot.    I loaded up the game and decided to continue with my Churchill GC (everyone hates it, me included more or less, but I’m still going to unlock that last gun) and my AT-2 (I can’t pen you but you can’t pen me !).

The maps appear to have gone through another round of tweaks, and the next patch of 9.11 is coming soon.   There seems to have been some controversy around version 10, but I haven’t penetrated the problem.   Doesn’t matter – this is still a fine, fantastic game.

The problem I have with how I tried to play World of Tanks was trying to unlock every tank.    That is never going to happen if you stay as a sane person.    Premium giving you a 50% XP boost, means, 150% of never is still never – and it costs you a minimum of $10 a month along with tying you to the game.    Now, playing a match or two a night – or even all night – that’s much more doable, and just enjoy the sensation of progression rather than feeling the need to be controlled by it.

I look at the small sums I’ve spent for other games – $40 per title, $10 for Ingress, maybe $40 for Marvel Heroes – and I compare that to blowing over $300 on World of Tanks.    Yeah, that was probably not wise, and I doubt I’m doing that again.

That’s what I’m saying today, anyway.   See what I end up saying at month end.

 

World of Warships

The vision of the unified account came true only 1/3 of the way.    Sure, all of Wargaming’s big titles have gold, free xp, and credits; but the gold does not transfer over to Warships.   This is a real irritant, given that I have a ton of gold on my World of Tanks account.   Guess I’m going to be able to train/retrain crew members for quite awhile.    On the other hand, I’d buy full price ship slots right at this moment, but I can’t unless I buy doubloons.

Free XP does not transfer either, but the premium time does.   Yay.   I can be “locked in” to Wargaming’s three premier titles.   I’m not going down that path, thanks very much, but I have to admit the idea of owning additional ship slots will probably get me buying doubloons.    This leaves me with an interesting question on free XP in Tanks – do I spend it already (90k hoarded) or continue to hoard it and perhaps never use it.

The gameplay is fantastic, as good as I remember from closed beta.   After one night, I’ve reached the exalted tier of III with a St Louis cruiser, which I’ve yet to take for a spin – I want to unlock the destroyers first and try that gameplay out.   I’ll have to try and get a game with my buddy going, as well – they do have platoons in the game, I hope.

World of Warplanes

I’m not patching that turd to see if it still stinks.    Reports are, it stinks, so I’ll not dive back in there.

Armored Warfare

HZero has apparently been playing this one, although like me, his blogging seems to have gotten light.   I downloaded the installer and will have to try this one out, at least.

But first – time to unlock the American Destroyer tree.

World of Warships – Now LIVE !

Tags

Ingress, World of Battleships, World of Warships

My buddy called me last week, really excited.   He saw a commercial about World of Warships.

“Dude !    You gotta try World of Warships – it’s awesome !”

I’m thinking, this must still be open beta.    A lazy websearch also ‘confirms’ this.

“Yeah dude – they aren’t live yet.    The gold isn’t linked between the games, so it’s not live”

This was early last week, and today, as I updated the game, I googled the correct thing and found out the game is released as of September 2015.    Gold has not transferred according to the unified account vision which was described early on in development, but otherwise this is apparently the real deal – it’s all live, you can buy replacement gold currency described as doubloons, and the game and progression will not be reset.

How did I miss this ?    No email – that I could remember.    No announcement.   No other bloggers playing ?    Or am I that far behind reading compatriots blogs ?   No matter, I know about it now.

I haven’t played for months – You know, Ingress took over my life – so I logged in after updating and found myself immediately in some kind of tutorial mission.   While I’ve probably forgotten plenty, I did seem to know enough to survive the tutorial without embarassment.

Survived !

The “Garage” is replaced, naturally, with a Port for this game, and I get four starter ships.

Only four ? Aren’t there British ships ?

Random clicking did not produce the tech tree, but I did find my service record.

There are now 11 “Service Levels” which presumably unlock tiers of the tech tree.

And so I went into my first battle, which as memory serves, is players on my side and bots on the enemy side.

You start out looking for enemy ships among the islands.

I maneuvered a bit and ended up sunk in my first battle.

Rats.

But the third battle put me into “Service Level 2” where I had access to the tech tree.

That’s why I couldn’t find it before.

It looks like I have something new to amuse me.