Monday 14 January, 2008

Gamelog Entry #1:

SUMMARY:
Rappelz is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) that has three character races: Deva, Gaia, and Asura, within each of these races are three classes. For Deva there is the Holy Warrior, Cleric, and Breeder, for Gaia there is the Fighter, Kahuna, and Spell Singer, and for Asura there is the Strider, Dark Magician, and Sorcerer. Each class basically has a warrior, a mage, and a summoner; respectively for all races. Initially each race starts out with a basic character which you can later choose to become one of the classes for that race, meaning you don’t have to make a decision about your character until after you’ve played the game for a little while. About halfway through the game you can “job change” the aforementioned classes into their next evolution, so to speak, at which point you gain another skill set to go with the new sub-class. For the fighter and mage type there is a choice of two job changes to narrow the specialty of your character, while the summoner type only has one possibility.

GAMEPLAY:
As I said above initially everyone starts out on the Trainee Island with the basic characters for each race and has to run around doing several quests that teach you the rules, controls, and several nifty features of the game. As in any RPG you have to gain a certain amount of experience to level up, this is done by killing monster and doing quests for NPCs in the towns. (Note: Quests give a lot of experience, so it is definitely worth doing them). In Rappelz, along with experience, you get what are called Job Points these are used to get skills or to level up your Job Level. The job level, not the character level, is what dictates which skills are available for you to use. Hence, you don’t have to worry about messing up your character build by getting or upgrading a skill because you can just gain more job points by killing monster, in effect giving you unlimited job points.
One interesting feature of Rappelz is that your character has stamina. What this does is that, as long as you have some stamina, the amount of exp (experience) and jp (job points) doubles for each kill. On that note, the leveling in this game is really quick (at least for the first 25 levels or so); playing the game for an hour will likely get to level 10 at least.

There really isn’t much of a story for the game, I mean there is a quick background story to the three races are how they came to be, but there’s nothing to follow that and there is no final goal that you have to achieve. The game is definitely fun to play. The quick gaining of levels and abundance of quests makes it so that there is always something to do. The social interaction aspect really depends on the type of character you have. A mage character will need to be in a party to fight higher level monsters, whereas fighters are able to fight higher level monster on their own.


Gamelog Entry #2:

GAMEPLAY:
The style of gameplay doesn’t really change for higher level characters; you just get new skills and equipment. Though at the same time new areas of the game will become accessible to you, by this I mean that you will be able to go to new places on the map and fight higher level monster thereby exploring the world further. One of these places that you shouldn’t even attempt to go to without a strong party are the dungeons. These dungeons house monsters that much stronger than the ones you fight elsewhere in the game.

DESIGN:
I have mixed feeling about Rappelz. It’s a fun game to play, I certainly enjoy playing it but there are certain things that really bug me about it.

Let’s start of with the good elements. One element I really like is the amount of hot-keys that are available. Unlike most RPGs where you are limited to just the F1-F12 keys, Rappelz has F1-F12, Alt+F1-F12, Ctrl+F1-F12, and Shift+ F1-F12 be the hot-keys which really helps when you have a lot of skills, potions, and actions to map such that you don’t have to open your inventory in the middle of battle. On that note, items stack so the amount you can carry is only limited by how much weight you can carry, which is dependant on your items and your character’s strength. In Rappelz, the stats are automatically allocated each level with emphasis on certain stats depending on character class. A feature that I’ve already mentioned before is the stamina effect that doubles the exp and jp received. Also, there is are two items called Force or Soul Chips, which can be used on monsters to double the physical or magical, respectively, damage dealt to them for ten seconds; these items are quite abundant and pretty cheap to buy. I also like how each spell has its own cool-down time, so while one skill is cooling down you can use another one.

Now that I’ve covered good parts it’s time to talk about the bad parts. First and foremost, I really hate the fact that the developers are making this a game in which if you want to have better equipment and a more enjoyable playing experience you have to spend real money. There are some items that they sell in their online shop that simply don’t even have a minute chance of dropping in-game and if you want them you have to buy them; and these items aren’t cheap at all. This really ruins the long-term playing experience because even if you play for a long time you can’t get some of the best items in the game. Another thing that bugs me is that some monsters have a very low spawn rate, so sometimes finding the exact monster you need to complete a quest takes a really long time.

This is all right, though going deeper into the design section would be preferable. Don't just describe the gameplay again, but try to answer the questions of why these are good ideas and how the elements work together to make the game. You gave good background on the summary and gameplay sections, which I appreciated. If you can keep up that level of detail and make the design section deeper, this would be a fine GameLog.

Please note that we would prefer it if you had two separate GameLogs for each session of play, with a design section for each. Keep this in mind for your next GameLog, all right?

Amy Leek (grader)

Wait, my apologies, I was misremembering the requirements about summary and design. Design is just on the second entry, it was my mistake that you needed two. But we do want two entries. Sorry for misleading you.