![]() ![]() In League of Angels, there seems to be nothing at all to enjoy. The combat could play out automatically because the fun is derived from making the decks. Players could obsess over the perfect deck and could spend time tweaking all of the different cards in order to do special things on the battlefield. For an example, let's say that the game's coolest activity is not combat but assembling a deck of special cards. I normally have no issue with automated systems, as long as the game in question gives me some other reason to play. Even your skill tree is nothing but a series of unlocks that you click on as you level. As you level, you can add new equipment or upgrade old items, but there's no brainpower involved. You click on the mob and are swept away to an instanced battle that plays out for you. Your hero will build up a small army over time, and your army will fight your enemies automatically. For some reason, the game just wants you to sit there and click occasionally.Ĭombat is - I think - supposed to the main activity Of course, there's nothing to combat either, so I'm not sure why the developers even bothered to create assets obviously meant to invoke other franchises. You might describe this as some sort of virtual slot machine, but I'm not sure the activities in this MMO require the brain energy needed to play even the most basic game of slots. There's daily loot, recharge rewards, more login rewards, new player rewards, alchemy (basically a stone that gives out free gold), daily tasks, gemology (a minigame that awards stones that can used in upgrading items), and many other ways to sit there and accrue goodies. If you log in once a day, you get a reward. If you play for a certain amount of time, you get a reward. Not only does the chat box stay alive, but the UI constantly glows and sizzles with life, begging players to click through many of the various activities and rewards that pummel you as you play. ![]() Watch live video from Massivelytv on TwitchTV It didn't shock me at all especially since I have been brave enough throughout my time at Massively to venture into the darkest and most boring corners of MMOs, seeing first-hand how click-to-win gaming is not only popular but growing in popularity all the time, in spite of what mainstream gamers might think. The chat is always flashing with new players and chit-chat between older ones. Soon after the tutorial, you will find yourself in the real world, and you might be shocked at how incredibly busy the game is. A new player will hit level 4 within the very first tutorial fight (which is exactly one click of the mouse in length). In fact, two of the players I talked to explained that reaching later levels was the sole reason they played the game. I noticed no difference in playstyle when trying out both classes, but it is possible that further down the line things do become more challenging depending on the class you choose. You'll start off by making a character from one of two classes: Mage or Warrior. In the end, the general consensus was that 1) No, there is nothing else to do but click, and 2) Some people just dig it. I chatted up with a handful of players during my week in the game in the hopes of understanding what they get out of the game and to be sure that I was not missing some key ingredient that made the game truly worthy of a player's time. I do not mean any insult to those players who simply enjoy the mega-casual nature of a game like League of Angels. That leads me to the two questions that always pop up when I play a game like this: Who does enjoy such a title, and why make such a title in the first place? Sure, a player will occasionally need to look up from his Wyatt Earp biography to read two or three words of text on the screen, but generally the game does all of the work. ![]() I should have known as soon as I saw League of Angels that the game would ask nothing of me but to babysit the mouse and keyboard, making sure that neither ran out of juice. There is nothing so special about Western gamers - and their tastes - to prevent our MMOs from becoming single-click level races, and nothing more. There are plenty of players in the West who will (and do) gladly participate in this hands-off gaming. ![]() I've discussed the massive, massive success that browser-based gaming has seen in China and other places, but I always preface that discussion with a warning: It is not going away. It wouldn't really matter, anyway, because this week's Rise and Shiny game comes from the mind-bogglingly strange genre of hands-off browser-based MMOing. I am no fan of reading walls of text that detail how to "properly" perform in an MMO, and I will not break my policy this week. I do not enjoy writing guide-like articles. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |