Metropoliscape

Where to even start? Got back from my cruise to the Caribbean. Was nice, don't think I can do that again though. Didn't get seasick or anything, it was just disorienting at times. Great weather and fun with friends though.

Work's had me busy lately as well, which is good. I managed to get my 99 Strength at the same time as a friend, which was fun. We got the level by pulling sharks out of the water barehanded at Catherby.

The new skill was released, Dungeoneering. I'm a little on the fence with it. My main complaints are it being multiplayer (yes, I know you can solo too), the prestige system, and the repetitiveness of it.

I like that its an interesting way to train all your skills. All inefficiently, but I guess that's good if you log on and have no idea what to work on.

The multiplayer thing I don't really like. I have no problem requiring a team to go to godwars, do some minigames, etc. However, when I want to work on a skill, I don't like that the xp I get is dependent upon other people. Yes I know PC, SW, etc are basically the same, however those aren't the only ways to train those skills you get xp in.

I've read the Prestige system several times and I still don't get it. How am I getting 0 prestige on a room I've never even been in before? My first few levels it was 0. I don't get how its 0 if I've never even been in the dungeon before. Most of the player explanations use other games such as Call of Duty to explain it. Well, great... I've never played that. This is the only game I play, unless you want to count Brickbreaker on my Blackberry.

The repetitiveness I'm hoping gets better. Right now its run around various rooms for an hour, mine, smelt, make armor, fight a boss, repeat. I was hoping for some more mentally challenging aspects of it. So far the only one that was interesting was arming statues to fight their counterparts with the appropriate combat technique.

I'm dating myself with this, but did anyone out there ever play Adventure? It's a video game from when I was a kid. You were basically a dot who ran from room to room in a castle looking for certain colored keys to open certain doors. There were also weapons you would have to find in order to kill the dragons guarding it. When you completed a level, you moved on to the next castle, where you would do the same thing, just a little bit harder.

The first thing I thought of while working on this skill was that it seemed like an updated version of that game.

I'm kind of bummed, I was really looking forward to the skill but it just seems like a time trap providing very little xp and little rewards. I'll wait though. Summoning had its issues when it was first released as well. They were tweaked after a few weeks of release. Hunting and Construction had some as well after their releases. I'm sure this will as well.

I think I'll like it once I get over the initial disappointment and try to convince myself that I'm doing a fun activity, not trying to train a skill. My mind works in two ways when playing. There's 'get xp' mode and there's 'minigame for fun, godwars bosses, hanging out' mode. The fact that they're trying to merge the two is making my mind explode.

Also the ores is driving me crazy. Couldn't we just have kept addy, rune, etc? The new names, trying to look up which is better, realizing I used the crappy ore to make a platebody and the good one to make gauntlets, is confusing. The names of the ores seem similar as well, adding to it.

One thing that looks promising is that this skill goes up to level 120. I love this because I believe this is a sign that other skills will follow suit. Some might complain about this, saying its too high, but I never understood the cap of 99 when you can get up to 200M xp in a skill. I know people are protective of their capes and the 99s they earned, which is still a great accomplishment, but it means more content will be added. With a new skill released say, every 2 years (just a guess), you eventually catch up to the game. Adding new content at say lvl 60 doesn't do much when you've got the highest level already. This isn't coming from someone saying their too high for new content, don't get me wrong. I just mean that if you've played for a number of years, and continue to play for a few more years, you eventually run out of levels to get if you're someone who does every aspect of the game.

Think of it as a a city. Eventually all the buildings get filled with residents. You can expand laterally by building an entire new building which takes years to execute (new skill), or you have the option of expanding vertically to the buildings which already exist. This still takes time, however much less since the foundation and existing structure are already in place.

I had openly wondered about the 200M xp cap as well. Someone pointed out that it was probably a server space issue when the game was in its early years. That makes complete sense. At the time, the buildings could only get so high. However, we've now got the technology to make them bigger.

Americans, I hope you got your taxes done! :)