Dust 514: Unlock the gun game at operation 4, sharp shooting 3?

In games I'm used to (which granted are often the single player persuasion), when you add skill points, you get better at shooting.

In Dust 514, with the assault rifle and using a dual shock controller, it feels more like you can actually hit guys once you get your operation up to about 4 and sharp shooting to about 3. You see little shield and armour bars actually slide down.

I'm not sure I've gotten that much better at aiming with the dual shock - I'd say this comes from statistics only, not from player skill.

Granted it may be like this for many weapons. But if you go for the overall workhorse that is the assault rifle, it seems to unlock the potential to hit about here.

I guess that's why they start you off with about 500,000 skill points - so you sink it all instantly into one type of weapon.

But if you don't (and nothing stops you from doing this), you might find you pretty much hit nothing at any range.

Though if you find there's a particularly good newbie weapon (the mass driver, maybe? I haven't tried it yet), feel free to comment!

Borderlands 2: Is the Assassin the weakest character - because it's skill based?

As opposed to the commando, who's turret is a computer aimed monster, the assassin seems to have a design brief to be as skill based as possible. You get a better zoom, but no auto aim. Maybe your hologram distraction explodes, but that's if you drop it near enemies. It's kinda like a polar opposite.

More satisfying gameplay - in single player. But I'm not sure what it's like to struggle while the commando drops a turret, throws a homing grenade and then sits behind a crate and lights a smoke.

'I am alive' - faux climbing tension?

I was watching the above demo of 'I am alive' (it's in the first four minutes) and here's a thing: Although it was a demo, it has you climbing and using up your stamina bar.

But really all those climbs are set pieces - the designers and playtesters have played through that and know the exact amount of stamina that will be lost.

It's not like in, say, nethack, where a particular area of dungeon is randomised and you know part of the random elements and so can strategize, in such a case the randomisation might very well mean its not survivable. Or it is, but maybe your strategy wont be good enough?

Here, if I'm understanding it, its a fixed, predecided climb with no strategic element (you just push in the right direction). Well, apart from hitting the extra effort button furiously.

Though I guess you have to see the right direction coming in time. Maybe when you play, especially for the first time, it's hard to know those right directions to climb and that's the uncertainty point that gives game?

Or the raw illusion of doing it all then badum, badum your stamina meter is down and OMG quick bash that button and...

Except it isn't a tension moment where things are going wrong. The designer set it to be that way.

Well, it was the tutorial level and also maybe the combats the real dealio, eh?

50% wins, 50% loses = hamster wheel?

Tobold's been talking about having a 50/50 win/lose ratio in world of tanks, derived from the skill matching system.

He says it means your choices really matter on the field.

But think about it - overall, he's at fifty fifty.

You could flip a coin and get the same set of results!

Indeed a perfectly balanced skill ranking system just makes your skill absolutely moot! Flip a coin - same result in the end!!

However, I don't know if world of tanks has skill tiers like quake live does. Quake live has four tiers, so basically you can move up them if you do happen to make the right moves towards winning consistantly. So in those terms I'd pay that your choices matter.

But by itself - a perfect 50/50 is, just by itself, a complete waste of time in terms of gaming. It's just a hamster wheel.

Massive Suck : Social gameplay leads to grind?

Quick thought for the day - do MMORPGs actually need to be unfun to play?

More specifically, do socialised MMORPGS (which perhaps some would say they all are) need to actually be unfun to play and...essentially suck?

The thing is, the whole emphasis on social means player skill can't get you out of suck ville.

No, for a social game, the way out has to be social. That you have more friends, or have a big guild, grants you resources that get you out of suck ville.

So the game has to suck. Not at the most shallow level (thus explaining why gamers seem to fetish graphics), but the heart of the game has to suck. And not suck in a 'your the last starfighter and only pure skill will get you out from the aliens evil grasp, even though it sucks to be put in such a position', because as said, it can't be player skill.

So it just has to be plain, out and out suck. Just in a way that you don't have X and...that's it, you don't have it. No zing, no surprise twist on aquiring it. It takes ages. It's grind. It sucks. Unless you got other players on your side to give resources or make it go faster.

Having socialising first and foremost as a priority of the game necessitates having grinding, sucky gameplay.