Hacker News Reader

Comment by EStudley | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate, but this may be too little too late for Runescape. After Jagex was slowly bought by VCs company decisions became less about the experience for the player and more about the bottom dollar.

Maybe this will be enough to bring back some of their lost subscribers, but who knows.

View on HN

Absolutely. As of last year, they have this thing in the game called Squeal of Fortune. You earn or buy "spins" and you use them to win coins, items or experience. It's basically gambling, but instead of winning real money, you win virtual money. Not only does it destroy any integrity the game had left, it aims to get kids addicted to gambling.

It's not gambling that is at the heart of Squeal of Fortune; it's micro-transactions. Runescape has been moving in that direction for a long time to squeeze whatever is left of the remaining player base.

Also to keep people coming back regularly they introduced lots of daily and weekly boni so everyone trying to pause got this feeling of missing out. I guess they got inspired a lot by Zynga for a while.

That's interesting. I haven't been following Runescape, but the VC purchase makes a lot sense.

I had a lot of fun with the original Ace of Spades. It was an amazingly fun minecraft-like FPS. I was excited when I heard Jagex was picking it up and assumed there was no way they could mess that up. Turns out, they did mess it up. It looks like they added a bit of graphical polish, tacked on some gameplay, and shoved it out the door. Supposedly the new gameplay is less fun than the original and now it costs money. It has a 49 on metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ace-of-spades

I don't even understand how you can ruin Ace of Spades. It was such a brilliant game, all it needed was polish. The game play was simple and brilliant.

What did they change so much that ruined it?

I know! They went from simple trench warefare to an over the top class based game. One class has a rocket launcher; another a jetpack.

>Ace of Spades was reviewed in the February 2013 issue of Edge Magazine, which found the official version to be "maniacally fast", and added that construction "feels pointless; barricades and buildings are meaningless when an enemy can jetpack over them or snipe straight through them, and the game moves too fast to allow complex strategising." Additionally, it said that the game's alpha incarnation was slower, "offering a long war where players constructed secret tunnels and vast, defensible forts." Ultimately, the review decided that the official version of Ace of Spades "tries to reach a no man's land between considered construction and chaotic destruction, but its foundations aren't sturdy enough to hold any longterm weight."

If you're missing the original gameplay though you have two options. The original game is still hosted on a site call buildandshoot.com and the Jagex game added a classic mode. I'm beyond paying for it at this point though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com