The Spodcast #12: TwitchCon, Dauntless, And Guild Wars 2

Heck, DOOM’s been ported to ATMs and smart watches and prolly uppity fridges by now. Or “Hell,” I should probably say. (A real place, apparently.)

If I were answering that favourite gaming protagonists question, I would actually be sorely tempted to say Dishonored 2’s Emily. She’s cool, and she might be one of the more relateable video game protagonists I’ve played (y’know, considering I’m also a 25-year-old woman who grew up with tomboyish interests, lost my mother at a fairly young age, and is honestly kind of an irresponsible mess). The Courier from Fallout: New Vegas would also be a strong contender; there’s a lot of great ways to roleplay them, and there’s even one version of the Courier I liked so much that I’ve played as him multiple times.

Josh, do you have Waffle House in Las Vegas? Because that chain seems to be particularly limited to the SE, according to this map http://onlineathens.com/sites/default/files/images/3620805_web1_waffle-house-eclipse.jpg

Also, I saw a Tim Hortons in SAINT LOUIS of all places, so you never know where they could end up https://i.imgur.com/c0ou0mr.jpg

I’m getting to this one a bit late, but as a GW2 player since launch it was very interesting to hear perspectives on how the game has changed, especially when some of the things Josh mentioned as having been changed are actually exactly the same as they’ve always been (eg event frequency. Josh recalls only seeing around one event per hour at launch, and far more now, but there’s never been any change to how frequently and where events spawn in the core game maps. The cast also mentions leveling, and while they did make it faster to get to level 20, the experience from there is just the same as it’s always been. GW2 has always made it fairly fast to hit the level cap by MMO standards). This is an interesting case of whatever the opposite of rose tinted spectacles would be called.

I fully agree on the game not doing a great job at explaining how you’re “supposed” to be playing it if you want to avoid grinding. The developers’ intention to counteract Chris’ issue of grinding the same events over and over seems to have been that players should switch to a different zone in the same level range when they feel they’re done with the place they’re currently in. However, it was only later that they automatically unlocked fast travel points in each starting zone, so back at launch you’d have no idea that going to another starting zone was even an option, or how to do it (and even now a lot of players don’t notice the fast travel points on the other side of the world map). Since you still get XP from content below your level there is almost always some unexplored world that you could go and uncover if you want to see something new while leveling. If the devs had found a better way of making it clear that exploration is a big part of the intended experience, and how easy it is to go out and explore, then the game might have been better received at launch than it was.