Tumbling Dice : GW2

If we're going to define gambling as "doing something the exact outcome of which is not entirely a foregone conclusion" (and regrettably it seems the consensus is that we are) then gambling in GW2 is very much not restricted to Gem Store purchases. It is, indeed, embedded in the game to such an overwhelming extent that it's somewhat surprising anyone plays at all, given the apparent propensity of gamers to quit at the first suggestion that there may be some element of chance involved in the enterprise.

Consider, for example, the Mystic Forge, an elaborate construction whose outlets in Lions Arch, The Mists and any number of pay-to-enter velvet-rope enclosures form a conduit to some netherworld dungeon, in which the Djinn Zomorros languishes, incarcerated for an indeterminate period by persons unknown for unspecified crimes. Here adventurers come in their thousands and tens of thousands to deposit rare or exotic weapons by their millions in the hope that Zomorros will turn them into pre-cursors.

Mostly he doesn't but people keep trying. The lure of a Legendary leads many to try their luck at the Mystic Toilet, so named because it's like throwing your money down one.

Then there are the Skritt with their enterprising, entrepreneurial, ectoplasm exchange. This feels a lot more like actual gambling. People call it playing the Ecto Slot Machine. In fact, you always get something back, even if it's often less than you put in, so it's really just buying a pig in a poke from a rat in a coat.

Open the box!

The original Skritt gold sink (for that is its true function) arrived unannounced along with the revamped Lions Arch. It was, indeed, so very far being announced that most players probably still don't know it's there and half of those who do can't find it. For reference, it's here and there's another one, which you're even less likely to stumble upon by accident, in Skrittsburgh.

As a company ANet is famous, among other things, for iteration; a design ethos whereby you do the same thing over and over and over again until either it works or you stop noticing that it doesn't, whichever seems most expedient. They have also talked about five and even ten year development arcs.

Who knows what their long-term plans might be? Is it unreasonable to suspect that the entire game was devised as a half-decade long softening-up process aimed at rendering lockbox sales palatable? Probably, although I do tend towards the maxim "if you can think of it someone, somewhere is doing it".

Tinfoil hattery aside, by the time Path of Fire arrived, ArenaNet clearly felt they no longer needed to hide behind Skritt collaborators in caves. This time they brought the whole operation out into the open, with a full-scale Casino in the main expansion city, Amnoon.

The ecto lottery became a fully-fledged card game for hugely inflated stakes.  Disappointingly, not really. The "fully-fledged card game" part, that is. The "hugely inflated stakes" is true.

You're getting colder...

I was hoping for something like FFXIV's Triple Triad, where you play a hand of cards against an NPC. What we got was just another merchant selling lootboxes.

These are just a few examples of the cradle-to-grave integration of "gambling" in GW2. There are many, many more and yesterday I happened, completely by chance (ironically) upon another.

Mrs Bhagpuss and I spent much of Sunday doing Map Completion in Desert Highlands. It took a very long time because as I have mentioned before, and as I am finding to be truer and truer the deeper into the expansion I delve, Path of Fire is hardcore.

Well, hardcore by GW2 standards. Certainly the most hardcore open world content since the original Southsun. Heart of Thorns is decidedly casual-friendly by contrast. Anyway, that's really a post for another day.

The point is that I spent so very long trying to fill out PoIs that were next-to-impossible to find that I ended up discovering a slew of hidden rooms, corridors and caves that weren't marked on the map. Some of those had interesting things inside and some didn't. And then there was the Curious Bowl.

But who's counting?

The Curious Bowl is a small bowl sitting on the floor of a room at the end of a broken railway line half way down a forgotten crevice somewhere near the aptly-named Derelict Delve waypoint. Behind the bowl is a large statue of a kneeling demon. The bowl looks as though it might be where you place offerings.

If you inspect the bowl the game suggests you might like to drop a gold piece into it. Make an offering to an unknown demon? I should coco!

So, I dropped a gold into the bowl and next thing I knew I was inside a locked room. Facing me were two chests and two more demons. No exit. No NPCs. No mobs. No hints.

What else was there to do but select a chest at random and click on it? Aaaand...Bingo! Back in the room with the bowl. Now I'm down a gold and back where I started.

So naturally I did it again. With the same result. At which point I decided to google it. I'm not made of gold. Also, who knows what flags I might be setting?

It transpires this is the start of a nested "The Lady or The Tiger" trick only without the lady or the tiger. Instead, each successful choice puts a reward in your bags and flips you to the next room to try again.

Back to the day job.

There are four rooms. The rewards improve each time. Or, rather, the number of rewards reduces, leaving fewer, better items and therefore an enhanced chance of getting something good, although the wiki entry interprets this as "diminished returns".

In point of fact, other than an Achievement, there doesn't seem to be any rational reason to continue. There are no good rewards with the sole exception of a slim shot at a 24-slot bag in the final chest. Everything else is either very common indeed or can be bought from the Trading Post for much the same price as a single attempt.

It took me five tries to get a single chest to open at which point I called it quits while I was behind. I did have fun, though. Five gold well spent. Would play again - if it wasn't so much trouble getting there.

Let's face it, I am not a natural gambler. I was an unpopular presence at the table at college poker games because I would reliably stand up after a couple of hours with almost exactly the same in my pockets as I'd had when I sat down, a feat achieved by barely engaging with the process at all, other than the drinking and smoking parts.

I think it annoyed people even more that I really seemed to be enjoying myself. And I was. I like games of chance a lot so long as they don't involve any actual risk. The moment I feel anything that even hints at an adrenaline rush I stop.

It's just as well. I doubt I could play GW2 otherwise. After all, looked at from a certain angle, it's nothing more than a random number generator with a rococo front end.

Funny Weather We're Having: GW2

I spent pretty much the whole of today in Path of Fire. I started out in The Desolation, which is about as as nice as it sounds.

Actually, no, it's worse. "The Desolation" makes it sound like it might be empty, quiet, eerie.  Even, oh, I don't know.. desolate? I wish!

In fact it's crammed to bursting with vicious wildlife, poison gas, ley-line radiation, branded automata and two psychotic armies.Take your pick -  undead or cyborgs. Makes no odds. Everything wants to kill you, all the time.

I think this is "tundra", isn't it? Anyway, I'm no geographer but I'm pretty sure it's not "desert".

I was down there getting Mastery Points but after a while I tired of the heat and dust and headed North. To Desert Highlands.

Desert Highlands is not a desert as I believe I may have mentioned before, although I realize deserts can be cold as well as hot - endless snow instead of endless sand. Antarctica is a desert, technically. Desert Highlands is not Antarctica.

At one end it's all crags and monumental buildings and at the other it's... well, what is it, exactly? A lot of huts on stilts, boardwalks, rope bridges and pots the size of houses. And a coast. That's the part that's neither Desert nor Highland.

Flying through a blizzard to land under a palm tree. As you do.

Then there's a bit in the middle that's sandy and another bit that's purple. It's all a bit of a hodge-podge. Still, whatever it is, it's a big improvement on The Desolation - at least to look at.

When it comes to peace and quiet, though, you can forget it. Once again everything wants to rip off your arms and beat you death with them. It is quite literally impossible in most parts of Desert Highlands to find a spot peaceable enough to have a brief conversation. Every time Mrs Bhagpuss spoke to me it was five minutes before she got a reply because that's how long it took to get out of combat.

Over the course of many hours - I started around nine in the morning and finished about tea-time, with a break for lunch, a trip to the shops and a walk in the afternoon sunshine along the way - I eventually achieved Map Completion.

Who built this stuff? And for what? There's probably some lore about it somewhere...

I also ran down enough Mastery points to fill out all the special abilities for all the mounts. All that's left is the final Mastery for the Jackal and the Skimmer and all those do is share their buffs across the other Mounts. Nine more Mastery points and I'm done.

It was good fun but exhausting. Not to beat the thing to death but Path of Fire maps are just relentless. Heart of Thorns is like a stroll in the park - literally - compared to this endless gauntlet.

Mob density has already been mentioned but another issue is the extremely fast respawn rate. Because I frequently found myself detained for lengthy periods, trying to finesse my lurching griffon onto the top of a pillar the size of an occasional table, just as a for-instance, I had ample opportunity to study the life-cycles of the local predators as they tried to gnaw my legs off.

On the very rare occasion the developers stinted on the spawn they made up for it by dropping in an Elite. Oh, and two Veterans, which I've already killed. And a wandering spawn of half a dozen little ones...

I didn't think to time it but my impression was that reincarnation takes about sixty seconds. Maybe a couple of minutes at the outside. Frequently I was still fighting the tail end of the spawn when the early dispatches began to come back.

At one point - this was in The Desolation - I found myself in a battle that really did seem as though it was never going to end. I started off with a single Veteran Awakened Canid, somehow acquired some wargs and a Veteran spider and it escalated from there.

It was only after about a quarter of an hour that I realized I was fighting on what we used to call a "mob highway" back in the old EQ days. I don't think I've seen a genuine mob highway for a decade or more. Is it someone's idea of a joke?

Has anyone ever tried to come up with an explanation of how these chests get refilled every day?

Despite the unwanted attention, exploring Desert Highlands was a lot of fun. Mostly, I eventually decided, because it isn't a desert. I just like snowy, mountainous zones in MMOs. They are my favorites, I think.

There's a good deal of climbing fun to be had. Although I was set on ticking all the official boxes to complete my map it became apparent rather quickly that a lot of the points of interest I could clearly see around me weren't included in the tally. When you look up and see ruined buildings on the crags above you or look down and spot passages disappearing into the cliffs below you don't really need a marker on the map to know there might be something worth investigating.

The cartographers may have missed the point now and again but the developers rarely did. Path of Fire is littered with chests and some of the best coffers are in the highest or deepest or least accessible places. I came away with my pockets overflowing.

This is a log fire. There are large piles of logs on both sides. The Norn tells the Charr how lucky it is there's so much coal around because she's freezing. Did the writer and the artist ever talk to each other? Also, I know it's in the snowcapped mountains, but just outside the door there's an open lava flow. How cold can it really be?

I also found the start of the Desert Highlands Griffon Master Race ... er, wait a minute... that doesn't sound quite right... Master Course - Course, that's it! The flag is so very high, so hard to reach that just getting to it automatically qualifies you to enter.

It took me half a dozen tries to get Bronze but it's the first Griffon race I've done and I was seriously delighted just to finish. It also honed my flying skills more than somewhat. I was concentrating so ferociously I neglected to take screenshots of anything but the starting flag so here's Dulfy's video , which I used to try to understand the technique required. It's a lot harder than she makes it look, I'll tell you that for nothing!

In the end I got what I wanted: map completion and every Mastery in Desert Highlands. I even got to kill the Caffeinated Skritt when someone tagged up and called it, one of the more awkward requirements for the Soulbeast ascended dagger collection, which it appears I'm doing.

There are quite a few weird sights in Desert Highlands but this is the strangest by far. An ethereal city - or the plan for one - hanging in the night sky. I feel I should know what this is but I have no idea.

The maps weren't exactly buzzing but there were plenty of people around, mostly whittling away at collections or completion or filing out Masteries just like me. It felt relaxed, friendly, laid-back. It reminded me of a Central Tyria map maybe a year or two after launch. Not a bad thing.

The next thing I need to do is to take a close look at the new Elite specializations. I'm doing everything on my Druid because it's easiest that way but I really should think about which class would benefit most from having the full PoF specialization. Currently I'm veering towards Mesmer.

Better wait until tomorrow's big balance patch first, though. Those that were first shall be last and all that. Let's wait and see how the dust settles. However that pans out, working on specs should be something to chip away at in the dark, Winter nights, at least.