Good News in Vile City

Whether you are a battle hardened pro or a feather-light n00b, there is good news in Vile City.

There was a serious inflation issue, something not unusual for light-fare games with micro-payment enabled upgrades. The result has been ongoing forum discussions about the lack of fairness, and a decent number of other complaints, which generally stem from the same main topic of inflation.

Perhaps realizing the potential loss in revenue, and maybe experiencing it, FinalMotive [1], the game owners, set forth a series of drastic but effective measures to address the issue.

Believe it or not, the most effective means to control the problem of in game inflation seems to have been petitioning gamers to return fraudulently gained loot. Like any other small website with a large number of visitors, every new release crops up a number of bugs, many of which are exploitable for in-game benefit. Again, seeing as the game is tied, in some way, to real money, the temptation to take advantage of an error is ever-present. Having seen this as a major cause of the runaway inflation, the Game Ops called on remorseful cheaters, as well as players who had a valid reason to suspect cheaters and scammers, to report the ill-gotten in-game currency. Very many did, and partly thanks to this effort and cooperation, the numbers have improved dramatically.

Without some significant time, in game, the numbers below won’t have a common sense feel to them, but if you look at the percentages, you will see how this change could swing inflation back to a reasonable metric.

A mass-mail message from the Game Ops delivered on June 8th informed us of the old vs. new total cash in the wild.

Game Money was: $1,578,189,954,135,695
Game Money is: $28,988,357,172,650

To put that into easily understandable terms, divide both amounts by 100 billion (100,000,000,000) and then imagine if you had the “was” ($1,578) in your hand, then someone swapped it out for the “is” ($28). The ratio is exactly the same.

Now, that might leave you with a sour taste in your mouth, but remembering that it was necessary to reduce the massive size of the false economy, and that by-and-large the perpetrators of scam and exploit paid the price, this is a huge accomplishment.

There were some other, more direct measures taken, including some new gambling type games which generally ate more money than they spat out, and some account “freeziures” (sieze and freeze) which contributed to the adjustment.

I’ve not had enough time to run around Vile City and see how this change has really affected the market, but I will be keeping watch over the next weeks.

New Game by FinalMotive

In other news, FinalMotive also sent a mass-mail pimping another new game, which was the first time I ever saw any blatant advertising in their mass-mails. I don’t see the harm in it either, and probably many frustrated VileCitians were happy to find a new place to go drop their micro Paypal (and now Google Checkout) payments for glory and bragging rights.

The new site is http://www.biocidecity.com/ and closely resembles Vile City, except instead of Cyber Punk themes, the story (simply) revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where the only choice is ‘kill or be killed’. I know, I feel cheaper somehow just typing a phrase like that. Anyways, it’s a clone of Vile City, which is a clone of their mafia style games, which is to say, they are all multi-player online games (mogs) without the heavy client (play in your current browser) or nice graphics <grin>.

A Word from your Author

In case anyone has wondered, I am write these articles from time to time mostly for my own amusement. You may notice I don’t have any advertising on this little blog, and don’t have any plans to add it. My main reward is monitoring the blog traffic graph on occasion to see what keywords draw people in and how many views the individual pages bring. The best way to say thanks is to drop a comment on one of the posts. I would love it if people found this site useful enough to add their own bits of info. The strength of any blog, in the end, is not the guy who writes the posts, but the community that interacts with it.

Or, if you you are disinclined to do that, you can say thanks by signing up with my referral link, which gives me some in-game booty: http://www.vilecity.com/index.php?r=17206 :)
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[1] http://www.finalmotive.com/

I’ve noticed more and more traffic being pulled into here by my Vile City Cyberpunk game posts, so I thought it was time to add a little more advice.

These posts are generally pointed at newer players, to help get some root down and gain some traction in the game. For the experienced players, I hope this will serve as a review.

Choosing a Car or a House

At the beginning of your career in Vile City, you may be unsure of which to buy, a car or a house. Let me explain what the benefits of these are first, and then offer my suggestion.

Benefits of a Car

With a car, the major benefit is free travel between cities. Frankly, this is nice. The buses are cheap, but you have to make sure you have the cash in hand, and with the car it’s just a click or two and your done. Additionally, you can race your car with other players, and put money on the races, thus creating another possible income stream. I tried this back when the cars first came into the game, and were still pretty rare, and I was crushed every time, with my lower quality car and car parts. I haven’t tried in a while, but that’s mostly because I have other ways of getting money in game. The downsides to owning a car are that it is expensive to build in the first place, since you need to buy the parts individually (frame, engine, muffler, etc) and that when you use the car for transportation, you need to wait a full 2 minutes before you can use it again. The buses, on the other hand, will take you any time you have the bus fare.

Houses

The main benefit of a house comes when you train, attack or mug. There is a meter along with your health, nerve and energy – it’s called Awake. The idea of awake is something similar to gas for a car. When you run out of gas (awake) your character get’s too tired to do anything. He won’t die, but he won’t be the slightest bit powerful.

In reality, the awake gauge is a little bit more complicated. Let’s take some sample figures, to see the whole picture. Your awake gauge reads that you have 1000 Awake. Now you head over to the Gene Lab and you “Gene Jack All Defense”. Based on your energy, you were able to gain 2000 defense. Now, you go about your other business in Vile City and as you do, you spend more of your awake, here and there. The awake bar takes time to recover, so a bit later, after you Energy is restored you go gene jack your defense again. Now you go in with 900 awake, gene jack all in defense, but this time, you only get 1500 points in defense. Notice, that only 100 awake is gone (10%) but the gain in defense was down by 25%. It is not a strict analog. In fact, if you were down to 800 awake, you would lose even more, and it drops off quickly. These figures are all for the point of illustration, and probably do not relate exactly to anyones experience, but they are accurate in terms of the mechanism of the Awake meter.

So, why get a better house? Your house determines your total amount of awake. The more you have, in the first place, the longer your awake will be fuller, and the more effect your training and mugging will have. Warning! If you “move house” and pick a better one, immediately after moving, your awake gauge will drop to zero, and rebuild as if you had used it all in training. For this reason, I advise you to use up all of your awake in training first, so that you don’t waste any awake. It is VERY slow to refill. Alternately, you can use a Jacked Modafinil to refill your awake, but beware, these are a bit pricey.

My Recommendation

At the beginning of the game, when training is so important, the house, for me, is the clear winner. The trouble is, a good house is quite expensive. My first major goal was the Gated Mansion, and it served me very well, for a long time. The price is quite high, but it is worth it. Try to make some money in the game by using 50/50 and doing all of your slot machine turns every day (make sure you hospitalize yourself first, to avoid getting mugged). Additionally, mug with all of your nerve, unless there is nothing out there, and remember, you have a better shot of finding a mug-worthy in one of the cities with large populations (Like LA Projects or LA Grounds).

Of course, when you can afford it, make sure you have both a house and a car, as that quick getaway which the car gives you, can be essential. And upgrade your house when you can!

Good Luck!

So the game at www.vilecity.com – one of a host of games from Final Motive, is a text based click multiplayer online. The whole game takes place in your browser and you can play “maintenence style,” just logging in for a few minutes at a time a couple times a day, or less while still having some reasonable amount of fun. The game is free, with real-money micro-payment benefits available.

Of course, if you clicked into this post, you probably already know that.

Let’s talk about the lag. If you have been playing Vile City lately, you probably noticed a heavy and at times debilitating lag in the play. If you are also new to VC, then you probably don’t know that this happened a little while back, as well. If you notice the player count, at the bottom of the screen, it hovers around 600 active players, especially when there are slow game play times. The first time, the amount was around 240. They responded with server upgrades, and things went swimmingly, until now.

So the good news is this: Vice City is becoming more popular. Why is that good news? For one, you get to keep playing, ‘cuz they keep getting more money (so they won’t go out of business!). For another – there are just so many more little innocent n00bs out there to pluck millions from, as they learn that Vile City is not such a nice place to be a n00b.

There have been some rocky times lately in VC as the server lags led to a brew of glitches that completely screwed over some players and seemingly harmlessly benefited others (not always as one at the cost of the other). These included:

• Vault Item Glitch – which caused problems with items going into and out of Gang Lending Vaults
• Blank Name Glitch – which allowed users to go around attacking others without any identification

There were other bugs, not disclosed by the GMs so as to avoid further misuse and abuse. On that note, the GMs take cheating very seriously and ban cheaters with little or no remorse. Even if you have paid for one of the month long bonus packs, they will not think twice of a ban, if you are positively identified as a cheater/scammer.

Finally, a note of the benefits of being an active player of Vile City: They recently announced that there would be a prize given out to the most active member, within a given period of time. Actually, the top 10 most active players, from that period, were placed in a raffle, and the winner was chosen randomly. You can view the raffle here, in Youtube, where the game operators placed the video of the drawing, for the sake of fairness.

What was the prize? A Playstation 3 and a bluray disc. W00t!

So, back to the first point of this post: will the lag stick around in Vile City? I say give it a little while, and they will address the issues, even if it means upgrading servers. They are faithful overseers of the city, as always.

If you want to join the game, you can create an account from the home page http://www.vilecity.com/ or you can be a chum and use my referral link: http://www.vilecity.com/index.php?r=17206 , which gives me some in game benefits.

Maddo

Myth War really delivered for me 6 months ago. After a frenzied search of the “top games” sites, I walked away with a link to the client download for Mythwar by IGG (Internet Gaming Gate http://www.igg.com/ ).

I gave them many long nights and Saturday afternoons, until my schedule demanded that I give it a break. After a hard drive melt-down, a new laptop and a change in my free-time, I decided to give them another try.

Getting back into the game is tough, since like most role playing games the beginning can be slow. However, I already see how I was drawn into the game so deeply the first time: the parallel quests and quick party formation functions keep you wanting to play, even if you are a weaker character.

The graphics are not exactly WOW – this game uses an isometric third person view, but they still manage to dazzle from the game splash screen to the meandering and sometimes dark levels.

I still don’t know what the higher level play is like, and I want to see if later in the game is affected by items which are purchasable with real money, since I want a completely free experience.

If you are in the market, time-wise, for a new MMO and don’t want to pay anything, check out Myth War.

http://mw.igg.com/modules/download/index.php

http://www.kerpoof.com/

Kerpoof.com is the perfect site to visit when playing with your little ones. This site nearly flawlessly pulls of the online version of a color-form book for you and your kids. You place figures on pre-painted backgrounds in your browser. Using a simple interface, you can adjust their sized and position.

Every time you take one of the “objects” (people, houses, plants, animals, objects) to place on the picture, the remaining objects shuffle and randomize, bringing in new options. This is a low-fuss, non-precise and fun way to spend 10 or 20 minutes online with youngsters.

With no login required to play, and the fun starting after just a couple clicks, this site won’t defeat their attention span.

Keeping it short for now – enjoy!

Ok, some down and dirty tips for the game everyone has been clicking through to on my blog (by far the most popular post)

Daily To Do List in Vile City:

1) Search Downtown – Completely free and you will alway get a some cash and usually some items. You will get enough for step 2:

2) Lucky Dip – $1000 to buy one chance to win an item. You can get $1000 easily by searching downtown first. You may get nothing, or rags or some item of no value, but then again, you might get what my gang member got, an item which sold to shops for over 2 billion. To a private buyer, that could easily triple. Clearly worth the $1000 every day.

3) Slot Machine - You will be able to bet more and more, the higher you level. It starts out at a very low amount, but it is still the fastest way to get money in the game. Have 5 times the amount of cash you can lose in one turn in hand, so you don’t have to keep visiting the bank. It is safest to first attack someone MUCH stronger than you. In Vile City, this is called a suicide hit–where the intention is to “die” and get sent to the hospital, where you are temporarily protected from attacks and muggings. If you pick someone MUCH stronger than you, they will know what you are doing, and probably not retaliate. Of course, there are no rules, so proceed with caution. The slot machine allows you to pay for 10 spins in once click. Always do all 10, and get through the 250 turns (in 25 passes) while you are hospitalized. Bank the money, and save up for whatever your cyberpunk heart desires.

4) Vote for Points - Once a day, you can get 10 points, which can be used to train, trade or sell for cash. There are two links you click, to cast a vote for Vile City as a popular game, and each one gives you 5 points. Do this EVERY DAY. It is the best way to get points (which can run from $200,000 to $500,000 per pont, depending on the market).

These are the basic daily to-do’s in Vile City. If you follow these guidelines, you will not be poor for long at all. Take a slightly longer view than “I want to be rich right now” and you will move up in the game quickly.

There are other ways to get stronger quicker, like paying a one-time $3 membership fee, which gives you benefits for a month. You get double interest for all money in the bank, and your item sales go directly to your bank, protecting them from theives. As a bonus, you are automatically entered into the daily 50 point giveaway for paying (L337) members. There are higher tiered memberships which give a lot more benefites, and they are generally recurring fees. Check them out.

Game home link:

http://vilecity.com/

My referral link (gives me some in game benefits):

http://www.vilecity.com/index.php?r=17206

My avatar in game:

Check out my original Vile City post.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/joelesler/manifold

This is by far one of the slickest games I’ve played in a browser. The idea is completely novel, and my only regret about the game is that the 6 or so levels are simply not enough.

You control the main character with 4 keys (arrows or w, a, s, d) and then move a “strange force” in the form of a sphere around using the mouse. You can shoot it to a specific location, and when you shoot it, you decide which way the strange force will flow. Essentially, you can choose the direction of the gravity within a sphere. You shoot this sphere to a static location. Hopefully you chose well, so the gravity helps you get through a difficult part of the level. Don’t worry, if you placed it poorly, you can use a key and mouse combination to call the sphere back.

Very original and fun.

This game reminded me of Marble Madness for the NES when I first found it. I started to play it and basically couldn’t stop. The first level is a cinch, once you get a feel for the controls of the heavy sphere you are supposed to navigate around the environment. The second level has given me such a run that I’ve only finished it once, in all my attempts.

It can jump, halt and roll on your command. It has a feel of momentum and the levels give you unlimited chances to fall off into the infinite abyss. The only downsides are the long initial load time and obvious fact that this game is an advertisement you play around in.

http://www.candystand.com/play.do?id=17994

Don’t hesitate to check it out, but do make sure you have a minute to let it load and a machine capable of running a heavy game in the browser (with Adobe Shockwave)

Another amazingly great flash browser game. Free of course, and completely time consuming. The feel of this game is like a real pool table, but the play is much simpler. Very satisfying. It will keep you obsessed for large parts of your day.

http://www.gameshot.org/?id=1364

http://www.pulpgames.net/milpa/

Very cool flash java browser game. Once you get the gist of it, you will probably play until your decrepit claw of a hand actually stops responding to your brain’s commands.

Go, try it, and give it at least 3 tries.