One of the biggest problems that you run into with relatively simple web MMOs is that you run out of new, interesting content fairly quickly. The game spends a couple weeks or a month unfolding, and then it turns into a huge grind... perform task A, attack person B, get resource C, and try to catch up to people who've been playing for a year and could crush you utterly if you had anything worth their time, or just because they want to.

BvS gets around that with a kind of game mechanic borrowed from other games not in the genre. The first time I saw this mechanic was in Disgaea, where you could "transmigrate" a powerful character into a wimp. Your levels were consumed, so your level 500 character is suddenly a level 1 character. Why would you do this? Because the 500 levels were transformed into potential for the character; after gaining experience back (which goes quick in Disgaea, heh), the again-level 500 character would be considerably stronger than he was the first time around.

BvS has something a little like that. When your character is approaching his maximum level, you get the opportunity to "loop". This sets your level to the minimum, removes most of your progress in the game, almost all of your allies and your techniques (but NOT most of your items, heh)... and increments your "season" counter. It's not a reset, it's the next season of the show! And what always happens when you get a new season? New theme songs!

Your character gets access to a few theme songs, plus additional ones if certain conditions were met in the previous season. These provide bonuses, but usually not straight attribute bonuses in the way that items or allies do. Some give you more stamina (actions per day), some give you experience bonuses, make you immune to Death Notes (!)... There's even a set of "filler themes" that give you penalties, but unlock seasonal content out of season (in case you want fireworks in October or Ninja-mas in February). Generally they make your climb back up to the top a little easier. (It's worth mentioning that there is also new content that you can't do until you get to season 2, or 3, or 4, and the .hack parody stuff requires you to loop like crazy...)

There are two hitches. First, each theme is either "opening", "battle", or "ending", and you can only get the benefit of one of each kind at a time, so occasionally you'll have to decide whether tomorrow you want more xp or more Drunken Fist bonuses or automatic ally-finding. Additionally, the theme changes lag a day, so you've got to decide what you want and then get the benefits tomorrow.

It's a good conceit, and it adds to the flavor of the game a lot more than "you incremented the loop counter, receive a shiny object here" would have.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 02:41 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 492 words, total size 3 kb.

1 I wonder how long BvS has been running.  There are a lot of well-thought-out touches like that.  Like the way that if you fail to find something on a mission, you have an increased chance the next time - so it's challenging without being frustrating.  (Mostly...  I hit Terri's level-up mission five times without it taking.)

My alt's village has another zombja map up.  I scored a lawnmower right off the bat and then scraped together enough points for level 3 Careful, and now I'm mowing down zettas left and right.

...

It's like we're talking a different language.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 14, 2009 09:42 AM (PiXy!)

2

My alt's village has another zombja map up.  I scored a lawnmower right off the bat and then scraped together enough points for level 3 Careful, and now I'm mowing down zettas left and right.

It's like we're talking a different language.

That's for sure. That didn't make the slightest bit of sense.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 16, 2009 11:46 PM (+rSRq)

3 Heh. Rough translation... "Zombjas" is a minigame that your whole group plays cooperatively. It's like a board game, really. Lots of zombie pieces on the board (the "zettas" are tough zombies with special abilities), and they slowly march down towards your village. Everyone gets so many action points per hour (they build up) and goes out to destroy the zombies, the zettas, and the rifts they're coming from. Weapons are mostly improvised, searched for and found depending on the terrain you're in (so the grassy plains area yielded the lawnmower, and I'm partial to chainsaws from the forest). How the lawnmower is used to kill zombies may be left to the imagination, unless you've played Dead Rising.

You get special experience points for playing Zombjas, that are used for abilities that make you more effective at it. Pixy reached level 3 in "Careful", so he has a -9% chance of breaking his lawnmower (or whatever) every time he uses it to kill zombies. (Weapons have a default breaking chance - very low for chainsaws, very high for branches or chopsticks or cricket bats or the occasional laser, somewhere in the middle for guns. We're ninjas, we're not good at gun maintenance. ;p) His characters are more advanced than mine - I'm still gaining points in "Speedy", which reduces the number of minutes in between additional action points being awarded (which, you understand, is a nice bonus indeed; at maximum level, it yields 50% more actions per day.)

There's a wiki. Nobody picks up all the lingo instantly, heh. And doubtless it serves its intended purpose - it gets people to log into the game at different points throughout the day, and look at the pretty advertising. ;p

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 17, 2009 12:19 AM (vGfoR)

4 Just landed Destiny Warrior, which gave me enough awesome to buy Shattered Limits 1.  So +3 to all ranges in one go.

Also have 4 of the 5 Knightmare Frame parts.  No Su-chan yet, even though I've succeeded in that mission 6 times now.

Aether Village will probably go boom today, so I'll be heading back to dear old Turtle shortly.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 20, 2009 05:06 AM (PiXy!)

5 Village go boom!  And... Now I can't finish my BurgerNinja missions.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 21, 2009 07:45 AM (PiXy!)

6 Heh, that's where I was when Lemon exploded.

Just got the Cote yesterday. Not much left on my S1 goal list... make Sannin, finish the Wasteland, which means doing enough of The Trade so that I can farm note pages to make The Paper.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 21, 2009 12:44 PM (pWQz4)

7 Sannin looks fairly straightforward except for the daily XP requirement.  That's rather a lot!

I'm hanging out in Cincinatti for a little while.  Got Su-chan on attempt #7, ran the first part of Shift Manager of Doom, now I just need that last frame part.  And to roll 17d17...  Which is at least possible (natural Tai range is 18 now), and the Duelist's Eye is only a couple of days away if I need it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 21, 2009 08:43 PM (PiXy!)

8 It's actually not that bad. A single Silver Elixir is 100k daily ranking points, for 50 appetite. If you have Lulu and Cici as your team, all consumables take 10 less appetite, so that becomes 40. You've got 140 base appetite, and a Hollow Leg gives you another 50. (There are other things that can give you a bonus - I've got +30 from a village upgrade, you can get +50 if you bingo someone while Palmface is in your party, and juice can give you a little more...)

It's reasonable to say you can have 240, with Palmface and the Hollow Leg. That's six Silver Elixirs (themselves farmable from silver petals dropped by Shorty and Strawberry), so 600,000 points of daily ranking and you haven't run any missions yet, or spent any stamina except for one bingo. And you can eat ramen for another 40 appetite, one more potion, so that's 700,000. (And, if you have The Note, that bingo also means you'll earn 20% bonus ranking for the rest of the day, though it doesn't multiply the 700,000.)

Going through a "normal" day of A-rank missions, I can reasonably expect to clear 200k in ranking. You can stretch that out some if you go with a team including Pinky lvl 2 and Stalkergirl lvl 2 (each of which give you 1 stam back per regular mission, so that's 20% more missions.) With the Arena Favorite item (15% extra ranking) and a Note Rush (20% extra ranking), and grabbing every extra source of stamina you can lay your grubby hands on (z-reward, 7-day bonus, 50x spar bonus, beach vacation, darts, the works,) you've got a very good chance of hitting 300k.

Slow down with 200 stam left to go or so. If you look like you're going to come up short, break out the parties. Go spend 20k ryo in the Party Room to throw an All-Out Bash, which is worth either 50,000 or 100,000 daily ranking, depending on luck. Use Nadeshiko's "Perfect Goth Evolution: Loli Loli" technique to double that, but costing 25 stamina per use. The parties start getting more expensive after 2, so it goes 20k, 20k, 40k, 40k, 60k, if I'm not mistaken. One or two plus that technique should be enough to push you over the top.

What's tough is getting Out On Top (the theme awarded when you loop the day after being #1 in ranking; these days that can take 3 million-6 million ranking points, and relies heavily on having stupid amounts of ryo for parties, plus Loli Loli technique and a Catgirl Entourage for an additional 100%...)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 21, 2009 09:36 PM (pWQz4)

9 Ooookay.

I'll hit S2 Jonin after the next dayroll, anyway.   That's only 300k XP; I just needed to find Su-chan and get my third bloodline.  I have one Silver Elixir already plus 56 petals, and my village has Special Jonin Academy, so I could hit it without even running any missions first.

I guess Sannin would get easier as you loop - the higher your crank, the more XP you get from missions.  And with the Knightmare Frame just around the corner, I can hang around this time until level 81, which makes Sannin a lot more worthwhile.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 21, 2009 10:37 PM (PiXy!)

10 Huh, just realised.  Jonin!  That means +2 Tai and Gen range for me.  17d17 Tai is easy.

One more Knightmare Frame part and I'm home!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 21, 2009 10:39 PM (PiXy!)

11 Doh!

Grind through burger looking for (and failing to get) B part.  Give up, take Silver Elixer, go to Jonin Exam...  Out of stamina.  Have a Super Potion, but not enough appetite (ate some fries earlier for no really good reason.)

Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 22, 2009 06:53 AM (PiXy!)

12 Yeah, that's the worst part of BurgerNinja. Fortunately I won't need to do the whole thing again (just up to Cici and Lulu for the appetite bonus).

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 22, 2009 04:36 PM (vGfoR)

13 Yay!  Jonin'd and Knightmare Framed!  And then I benchpressed a whale.

Even with my +100% item find theme, I still burned almost all my stamina - and 20-odd smoke bombs - hunting that B part.

Took me three tries to do 17d17 Tai, which is about what I expected.  I hope to land the Duelist's Eye tomorrow - that was my backup plan.  (Depends on how much harder the arena gets now that I'm Jonin again.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 23, 2009 04:58 AM (PiXy!)

14 Oh, and here's something nice about S2: As well as the "Stand By Your Ninja" theme , which gives you double the chance of finding allies, items, and ally drops, when you make Jonin you get Olmek as an ally, who gives you 2-for-1 on all drops.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 23, 2009 10:27 AM (PiXy!)

15 Woo!  Sanninated, with 158 stamina still left.

6 Silver Elixirs, about 330 stamina worth of A-rank missions at +3 crank, and one all-out bash with Loli Loli.  Piece of cake.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 01, 2009 05:01 AM (PiXy!)

16 And that wasn't even on a sevens-day.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 01, 2009 05:01 AM (PiXy!)

17 Getting sannin really isn't that hard, so long as you're willing to farm up enough silver elixirs. I'm making an OOT run on Sat, let's see how that goes...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 01, 2009 01:48 PM (pWQz4)

18 Cool!  I'm planning to do one as well, probably not for a couple of weeks though.

Oh, and Turtle has Zombjas now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 02, 2009 12:36 AM (PiXy!)

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