Brawl Busters - Shop/Gear

In this post, I'm going to talk a little bit about how gear works as well as the real money store.

Currency:

The game consists of two types of currency: Buster Points (which you get from playing the game) and Rock Tokens (which you buy with cold, hard, real money.)  Standard weapons and costume pieces are purchased with BP, cosmetic accessories or appearance changes are purchased with RT and upgrades can be purchased with both BP and RT.

Weapons and Costume pieces:

Gear is class specific. You have five different costume slots: head, chest, legs, hands, feet as well as a weapon. All of the costume pieces for each slot are identical except for the look so you can mix and match to suit your appearance as you wish. Each class has two different available secondary and special attacks which can be mixed and matched depending on which weapon you have. I've been playing a Slugger primarily so I'll use it as an example:

Secondary attacks: Trinity Ball - Fires three projectiles or Continuous Fire - Fires one projectile with a significantly decreased cooldown

Special attacks: Big ball - fires an orb that ends with an AOE explosion or Time bomb - places a bomb on the heads of what it hits and explodes a second or so later

Each weapon will make one secondary and one special attack available. I recommend buying multiple weapons and trying all the attacks out before you decide which two you want to use most of the time. Once you do so, then you can start upgrading that weapon.

Upgrades:

To upgrade your gear, you purchase items that have either single or multiple charges on them from the store. Weapon+ items increase the level of your weapon and hence the damage and Costume+ items increase the defense of items as well as your max HP. Costume pieces also have another slot for what are called "fuse upgrades." These add certain special stats to your gear such as reduced blast damage or increase crit damage.

The catch to upgrading your gear is that there is a chance that using the upgrade item will actually downgrade your item or destroy it completely. This provides the game with a money sink as well as the major advantage to spending real money on RT: upgrade protection. When you go into the upgrade screen, it gives you the option of spending RT to eliminate the chance that your weapon/costume pieces will be destroyed or downgraded. This will save you time from having to get more BP to buy more gear to replace what is destroyed.

Brawl Busters - Overview

I've been playing a bit of Brawl Busters the last few days. For those of you who don't know, Brawl Busters is a F2P multiplayer combat game. There are five different classes and several game modes such as fighting zombies and other critters to 4 on 4  team PVP combat. As you play through the game you get XP which increases your level and unlocks certain items and allows you to choose more classes as well as an in-game currency.

Things I like:

• Game is easy to pick up and play - The game starts with a series of one player tutorial missions that teach you the basics of the game and mechanics as well as allowing you to try all five classes to get a taste of them.
• Balance - Even though sometimes a person will just beat the tar out of me a couple times in a level, I never really feel as if any of the classes are overpowered. Plus, if you decide you don't like a class, you can switch to a different one mid match.
• Controls - The game usually feels responsive and the controls are easy to learn as well as customizable.
• Simplicity - The premise is simple and the objectives are obvious: kill people on the other team.
• Levels aren't important -  Just because a person is a higher level, that doesn't mean they're better than you. It just means they've played longer than you. I've already had several matches where I lead in kills/assists as the lowest level person on the team.
• Pay items aren't horribly overpowered - Items you buy from the real money store are either temporary, cosmetic, or obtainable through the free in-game currency.

Things I don't like:

• Matchmaking - The current lobby-based system kinda sucks. You're at the mercy of people jumping in and out of games or you have to wait on people to click "ready" before you can start matches. Sometimes this makes it hard for you to find a game to play right away. It's always a bummer when you have to wait longer than a match would last to find one to play.
• Items don't always work - One of the key mechanics of the game is breaking pieces of the environment (chairs, lampposts, garbage cans, etc) and getting items out of them. Sometimes it seems as if the items just completely miss even from point blank range. It's probably a latency issue but it can be annoying when you're being beaten on someone and you pop your item to get out of the situation and it doesn't do anything.

I'll get into more details about some of this stuff in future posts.

Stud-8 isn't just for dicks!

I'm really trying to blog more as part of a New Year's resolution I made back in 2007. One of the things I promised to share on this blog was stories from the WSOP. Since I'll be out there in Vegas dealing it again this year, I'd better tell some of those stories now before I forget them and replace them in my brain with new stories.

My first time ever dealing Seven Card Stud High-Low Split (aka Stud-8) was in Event #33 - $10k Stud-8 Championship. I had been working one of the graveyard shifts the first couple weeks at the series which meant I hadn't really gotten the chance to deal in many bracelet events. I had only dealt in a couple of the NLH $1.5ks and a couple downs of HORSE (I never dealt Stud-8 in that tournament for whatever reason.) When the DC asked for people to deal it, I volunteered in a heartbeat. Stud is awesome and I wish there were more lower limit stud games around. All of the tables had at least a couple pros at them so I was a little nervous at first. My first table had Thor Hansen and Nick Schulman at it so I was super psyched. Unfortunately, one of my worst moments of the series happened at this table.

When a tournament first starts, either a restart or a fresh tournament, sometimes as a dealer you get locked into that first table for a few downs. Sometimes the DCs just don't have enough dealers to immediately push into strings and give breaks. Hey, whatever, shit happens. So, at my first table that I had to deal three downs in a row to, I had a guy who I'll just classify as a dick. As much time as I've spent in cardrooms, I've definitely run into a dick or two or hundred in my life. However, this was the first time I'd run into one from the other side of the table. He was talking amongst the other players in a manner that suggested that they knew him. The TV in the room had the US Open golf tournament on it and the off-topic conversation was mostly about Rory McIlroy and his dominant play.

Our friend in seat five had dumped some chips over the course of a few hands and I could tell that he was tilting somewhat. I don't claim to be an expert at stud-8 but he was calling with some tweener boards against people with much better-looking boards and always having second best.

Thor Hansen said something funny (I don't remember what exactly, he was a very friendly and seemingly likeable guy) and the whole table laughed, myself included. Well, this did not go over well with five-seat. He said something along the lines of, "hey dealer, why is it you're smiling while I'm getting cocks shoved in my ass?"

I told him I didn't need him to use that language or berate me and if he didn't agree with that I could have a floor come and explain it to him. He looked like he wanted to argue for a second but then he shut up. I was a bit unnerved by the altercation but I calmed down when I finally got pushed and moved to the next table. Pros at the next table included Phil Hellmuth and Mike Sexton. Despite what you see on TV, Hellmuth is actually a pretty nice guy and mostly quiet. The shenanigans are just a show for the cameras. The real poker pros don't berate the dealers, they have too much class than to do that.

A couple downs later was a player break and I told the floor about five-seat. He told me I handled it well and not to worry about it. I'm pretty sure he busted out of the money so whatever!

I've got a story about when I dealt to Hellmuth in the main event, but that's for another time.

My LFR virginity is gone

A shaman buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to try out LFR today. I hadn't done it yet and I'd been working on my pally's gear this whole time for something, right? So, off we went into the queue and a few minutes later we were blasting away at some boss, I don't even know. The whole experience was a blur. Here's how it went down:

1. Buff, beacon on tank, etc.
2. Boss fight starts
3. Watch raid frames and heal people taking damage
4. Repeat #4 ad nauseum
5. Roll on loot
6. Watch random people yell "OMG U SUXOR NOOB"

LFR is simply awful. I had to log off the game afterwards to clear my head.  If I had never raided before in my life and this was my first experience of it, I probably would never do it again.

When I was a kid...

I've been in a terrible mood today and little things are getting under my skin. I fired off an email to the company that distributes the junk mail to my house every week and told them to "stop sending me all this garbage."

I also left a comment on this post because it just rubbed me the wrong way. If you join a battleground and the mage decides not to drop a table and you decide because of that you're not going to heal him, that's fine. But publicly abusing the mage for not dropping the table and saying "HEY, DON'T HEAL THAT GUY, HE DIDN'T DROP A TABLE!" is elitist and absurd on a level that I can't even begin to imagine. None of the other classes dropped a table and a few of them probably didn't even give you a buff. By that logic, none of them should be healed at all. Especially rogues... with their no buffs and their being invisible and their poisons and blinds and whatnot.

Now, don't get me wrong, despite what it sounds like, I'm not defending the mages for not dropping a table. If I had all the money back that I'd spent dropping tables in random BGs then... well... I wouldn't have that much money since the reagents are so cheap. Maybe the person playing the mage just forgot to drop one or maybe he dropped 18 in a row in BGs and forgot to stock up on reagents. Or maybe he just doesn't care since he just lost five randoms in a row because he's been playing with M&S all day. My point is, asking "hey, could a mage please drop a table?" sounds a bit better.

I guess since people don't run into other players in groups/BGs anymore then being rude seems like the good first option since there are zero lasting repercussions to doing so.

In other news, I've been healing with my pally since I hit 85 a few days ago and I already have almost all 378+ gear (missing a trinket and a weapon.) I spent a few thousand gold on a couple items, spent points on a couple more and got the rest as drops. I find it ridiculous that I'm already end-content raid ready after hitting 85 and only running maybe 12 heroics? Don't get me wrong, I like loot as much as the next guy but I'm a big fan of challenge too. Surely there has to be a point between the raid loot from vanilla and what we have now.

I have a buddy who's been playing WoW most of it's existence who quit the game a few months back. He came back with a ten-day trial, geared up, killed Deathwing and promptly quit the game again. It'd be nice if Blizzard could hit some sort of sweet spot between vanilla MC "maybe you'll get a piece of gear this month" to "oh, you're 85? Here's all your gear, go kick some ass!"

I remember in vanilla running all over the place to put my "Tier 0.5" dungeon set together. Even though I was frustrated as hell that that STUPID MAGISTER'S HELM wouldn't drop off of that STUPID ASSHOLE GANDLING in Scholomance, once it did it was oh so super sweet.

My mage is still level 80. Next week he'll be 85 and the week after that I'll kill the final raid boss in the game with him. No biggie.

On a Thursday

Football season has come and gone and left us with a new Super Bowl champion. The Giants still managed to win even though the Patriots looked like the better team most of the game. Welker doesn't drop that pass or one of a couple other plays going the other way could've changed the outcome of this game completely. Around the end of the third quarter Devon, who had been watching the game with me, said, "This game is boring."

Huh. I guess it was. All of the excitement happened near the end I guess.

After what I thought was a pretty good football game, the important stories from the day emerged:

• OMG LOL Madonna is old!
• M.I.A. gave America the finger! LOLWUT!
• Gisele yelled at fans of the other team for razzing her about her husband's play.

Speaking of M.I.A., I learned some things about her. #1, did you know she's an actual person? I assumed with a name consisting of an acronym that she was a group of people. As I was watching the halftime show, my thoughts sounded like this:

"Hmm, Madonna isn't as terrible as I expected her to be. Is she lip syncing? I can't really tell but yeah, probably. Who's that girl with the big ass? Oh, um... yeah, her name is Nicole Minaj or something like that. What about the girl on the other side? No idea. I guess they put a random dancer up there to balance out the stage. I hope Madonna sings 'Ray of Light.' "


Thank god that's over. Less than two weeks until pitchers and catchers report!


*****


I've been playing a bit of World of Warcraft again to pass the time. I hadn't played more than a tiny bit since Cataclysm came out. I played the beta so much I didn't feel like playing the actual expansion. I've been leveling my pally and playing the glyph market. The game is fun but the world seems smaller than it did way back when I first started playing. Also, leveling is waaaay faster. Guild perks + heirlooms means I did 67-80 in almost no time at all. I'm almost 85 now (84.51 to be exact) and I'm not sure what I'll do when I hit 85. I think I might get my hunter to 85 next.

Playing the game at my own pace and not feeling obligated to be on at certain times to raid feels refreshing.

Twilight

I haven't read the books or seen the movies, but I've gotten the gist of Twilight and its sequels from their being lampooned frequently in pop culture. Oh Noa has brought Reasoning With Vampires to my attention with her "Funny Bitch Friday" post. It's a great rebuttal to those Twilight fans who claim that Stephanie Meyer is a good writer despite what you may think about the books.

Google Reader

I don't like the new Google Reader interface at all. Before it was compact and easy to navigate. I understand they're trying to mix it together with G+, but I wish there were a way to use the legacy mode.

I can't tell if this is annoying or awesome...

I was trying to copy and paste a line from an article on one of my favorite time-waster websites, cracked.com today when I noticed the clipboard had extra text added to it. Example:

If you hang around Internet message boards, about once a month or so somebody will announce they're fed up with America and want to move abroad. The reasons vary: they want to escape to Canada to get away from the corrupt corporations, or they fear a President Bachmann. Maybe they want to go to Japan and get a job as President of Anime.

Read more: 6 Reasons Your Plans to Move Abroad Might Not Work Out | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19363_6-reasons-your-plans-to-move-abroad-might-not-work-out.html#ixzz1V8U68X2Q

My first reaction is "wow, that's annoying, I bet they have some sort of javascript on the backend that does that." So, with a little bit of searching, I discover that a lot of websites are starting to do this and they use a service called tynt to do so. Rather than using a third-party to insert the text, another person has found a way to do it in javascript. It's a clever little script that doesn't modify the clipboard contents, but rather the buffer of selected text as it gets copied to the clipboard.

Now if i just want to post a one-liner to someone from one of these websites, I have to manually sanitize it through notepad. Thanks, web 2.0!

News and Notes

• Just got a new job, going to be dealing at the Horseshoe of Southern Indiana (the one in Elizabeth, not the one in Hammond, since there are two casinos named Horseshoe in Indiana.) I haven't dealt since the WSOP so we'll see how rusty I am.

• My good friend Matt got me to play City of Heroes/Villains with him. I'd played it off and on a bit before but never really got into it. I'm having a lot of fun with it now. I made a mind/energy controller and I enjoy having mobs attack each other instead of me. I'm almost level 30; I should hit that tonight and I'm going to be creating a new costume. The character customization in the game is awesome, 100x better than anything WoW has. My other favorite activity in the game is exploiting the Black Market (Auction House). People really like to leave a lot of money on the table at the benefit of dumping an item quickly.

• I haven't told any stories from the WSOP yet, but I promise I will. Here's a taste: http://bit.ly/q4Td03 I totally dealt this hand.