Lum is a very attractive character for a lot of new players at Yomi. It’s also been said this is a bit of a shame though, because he’s one of the most complex characters in the game to play with, and so not exactly ideal for a new player. Yomi is a competitive game that supremely tests your valuation and reading (yomi) skills. As it’s a turn-based card game, there’s no real ‘execution’ to speak of (apart from rare cases [...Full Story...]
When I last wrote about Yomi, I was still very new to the game, but I’d decided to buy a single online character to get me started and to help me learn to play the game. I do think this is definitely the best way to get started at online Yomi, because I feel there’s just too much going on and too much to learn if you are playing with different characters every week on the free rotation; unless of [...Full Story...]
…Continued directly from Competitive Gaming 123… A quick review of what that our 1,2,3 was: 1. A level playing field. 2. Effective skill-based matchmaking. 3. Accurate and fair skill & result-based ranking. What’s always amazed me is that there’s so few competitive games that currently or have ever managed all three of these basic core criteria very well, or even at all in most cases. One caveat is that, generally, super-hardcore-tournament & clan competition stuff succeeds in adding some or [...Full Story...]
Well Halo 4 has gone one worse than Halo Reach even, and launched without any kind of skill-based ranking system, and now has a gameplay affecting grind exploitationware system too rather than a purely cosmetic one. These are absolutely horrible decisions for competitive gamers everywhere and make me wish I could go back in time to Halo 2′s release again! Reach eventually got some semblance of a working ranking system, but it was too little too late, confined to one [...Full Story...]
We’ve written so much here on Agoners about competitive gaming, as per our definitions, that I thought it might be useful to re-state a few things in a single article. A bit of a re-statement of our beliefs; a competitive gaming manifesto if you like. Gaming design for competitive gaming should always mean these three things: 1. As level a playing field as possible. This means that as much as possible everyone is playing the same game with potential access [...Full Story...]
I completely missed out on playing Guild Wars the first, because I thought it was just another MMO. Years afterwards when I got more into PC gaming I discovered it actually had a potentially decent competitive game hidden underneath the BS grinding veneer. So Guild Wars 2 is definitely on my agoners radar this time around. Although I missed out on any beta access, this latest update on the game really is saying all the right things for agoners: We [...Full Story...]
Here’s a quick note of a few new competitive games to go on the Agoners radar that I’ve picked out of all the news (and noise!) around. SpyParty is an asymmetric multiplayer espionage game that could certainly be interesting. I’ve come across it before a few times and read a few articles by it’s designer but this update about it doing a part of it’s beta test at EVO got my attention again. Hero Academy sounds like it could actually [...Full Story...]
I last took a look at Yomi when I was a complete newbie to the game. Here’s some continued thoughts on the game, the interface, and well, just about anything about it, as I’ve continued to play and enjoy it more. In case this seems overly critical, I have to say up front that I consider Yomi to be the most interesting 1v1 competitive game around right now! 1. Interface/tutorial issue – It took me far too long to figure [...Full Story...]
Interesting news tidbit today about DOTA 2.. Dota 2 will not be a pay-to-win game. All the items in the store are cosmetic, and don’t affect gameplay. All of the heroes will be available free of charge. We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it’s something we plan to avoid. (read more detail on their FAQ too here) Now I personally have quite a few issues of competitive gaming taste with the whole ‘MOBA’ [...Full Story...]
There’s been precious little in the way of competitive video games that have interested me recently. Whilst I’ve spent time in competitive games of Halo Reach, Street Fighter 2 HD Remix, StarCraft II and even Gears of War 3 lately, none are quite perfect to my taste or are lacking in some way to my gaming design ideals of how I’d like them to be implemented as online games. Other games I’ve read about or even trialled seem to be [...Full Story...]
The Xbox Live Fall Fail Update Late last autumn there was the usual “Fall Update” to Xbox 360s connected to Xbox Live, this year with the moniker (as is the trend these days) of the “Metro” update. I hoped to write about this when it was more topical, but I wanted to wait until I’d had a chance to try out all of the new features myself, and also the typical holiday festivities got in the way . However this [...Full Story...]
David Sirlin’s been causing controversy again where there should be none, with his excellent articles related to the SF3 Online Edition release on XBox Live & Playstation Network: The Anti-Progress Attitude What Is “A Love-Letter to the Community” For my part, I’m just sad to see the same mistakes being made over and over again by Capcom, I really do think they’re already causing another fighting game ‘death’ prematurely with their ridiculous antics. I mean, now they are seriously expecting [...Full Story...]