Might be a good day to play today. It’s Harry Potter’s birthday.
I did a bit this AM during the morning potty walk. There was a brief scene about Harry getting asked why everything focuses on him. An amusing lampshade hanging I guess…
I’m hearing the game as a whole is ‘underperfoming’ financially. I feel it may be the issue @Nabiki is probably part of: There’s certainly hard-core HP fans (Is the preferred term “Pott-head?”) but I feel like a lot of people are at least lightweight fans of HP and Pokemon, and the games have a lot of overlap in gameplay and such. Not just the re-use of the location database, but it’s still fundamentally a game of walking around and collecting various random things.
Since Pokemon Go has been around longer people are invested in it, so they’re going to be reluctant to change.
I feel like the same thing happened with the Simpson’s Tapped Out game and later games like the Futurama similar-ish game and others. Or in the larger gaming scene, why it’s hard to move interest from WOW or similar. Even further adrift, why D&D gets played even when there’s better RPGs for the job. (Disclaimer: I really like 5e, but don’t think it’s always the best tool for the job.)
I’m enjoying WU, but mainly because it’s something different to look at while walking Noodle. I like seeing local landmarks pop up as things: A favorite local cafe is an Inn, for example, and then there’s some hyper-local things like “purple dinosaur playground toy” being a spot of interest, which is literally a small plastic piece of playground equipment in a neighborhood playground that is only known to locals.
I wouldn’t mind some additional social elements: A simple one would be some sort of ‘friend stash’ where I can drop of excess potion ingredients for credit and maybe get the ones I need. Maybe using a different currency than the current ones.
I kind of wish the Kingdom of Loathing guys would do a geo-located game like this, actually. They’re much more player-friendly with so much of this stuff.
2 Likes
Hey man, why are you in the park all the time now?
Ummm, I’m looking for an Impossibilitus Unicorn with plaid pants.
1 Like
The issue for me is as the ‘basic mechanic’ starts to become repetitive my interest breaks down, and it’s already gotten a bit repetitive. So I think the idea has some merit, as it does get people out of the house, and they definitely improved a ton from the Ingress era where the game was totally for people in rural areas.
I just feel the repetitive nature of the loop closing in on me. Most games have a repetitive loop, but this style really does it.
Still playing, albeit a bit intermittently. I do appreciate that they seem to be trying to give out the ‘plot’ bits slowly to even slower players like myself.
This morning this game made me say, “I had to let myself by mauled by a giant spider so I could pick up the dog’s poop.”
2 Likes
Two possibly stupid questions:
- What do the Pillars of Light on things mean? I thought it was either “New to Me” or “Difficult” but it doesn’t seem to be either.
- What do the rune tokens for Challenges do? I tend to use low-level ones that I have a bunch of. But I’ve never actually done a Challenge with another live person.
The pillars of light indicate a “high foundable”. They are usually more difficult than a normal one.
The rune stones influence the rewards you get from a challenge. The higher level stones also increase the difficulty of the challenge a bit.
I’ve done a couple tower challenges with other players. The creatures are much tougher, and if you’re not careful, you might actually run out of time. I’ve managed to unlock up to tower chamber IV.
Clearly, I need to get Noodle his own phone. We’re the only ones at the local playground at 6:00 AM most mornings.
Thanks for the explanations! Do you know what the rune tokens do? Set the details of the challenge?
I found a guide online that looks like it explains things pretty well.
I don’t play enough to have really gotten everything down. If you ask my anything about Pokemon Go I can probably answer you, though!
To expand on this a bit the yellow pillars indicate a high foundable. The orange ones indicate a severe foundable and the red ones indicate an emergency foundable (I’ve only seen two or three of these and only managed to return one). Also the brilliant foundables that show up during events seems to have a purple pillar no matter what their difficulty.
I’ve unlocked up to Tower Chamber III solo, but I’m an Auror with lots of damage boosts, especially against Dark Forces, so I laugh when Death Eaters show up. I can’t see going past Chamber IV or V without help though, due to the time issue @Nabiki mentioned. I do go through more healing potions in the lower levels for sure.
My main gripe right now is that I’m level 21 and more often than not I’ll hit a low foundable with a great or masterful cast and it resists. Shouldn’t those be a piece of cake since I’m not a noob anymore? Also I’ve noticed certain families of foundables will disappear after the first or second time you cast at them. I expect this with severe or emergency foundables and have a few Dawdle Draughts ready for that eventuality but the low ones, again, shouldn’t be doing this nearly as often as they do.
My other gripe is spell energy. It should slowly regenerate over time and there should be a potion you can brew to get some of it back as well. I’ve upgraded my capacity a couple times but a couple high level wizarding challenges will drain you pretty quick. There is an inn a little less than a block from my work that I used to be able to hit from my desk because apparently being 11 stories up screwed with the GPS just enough to think I was closer. So I could get bits of spell energy throughout the day. The last update appears to have fixed that. 
But it gets me out at lunch now so I guess that’s good. There’s a two or three block circle that I can walk that has five inns so that helps a bit. Downtown SD in general is lousy with inns. The neighborhood I live in, though, is a wasteland in that respect.
1 Like
I have one if we walk over to the neighborhood pool, and I think another down at the trail head, but that’s only really happening if it’s a long walk (so weekends or days off work). Work is pretty empty: I’ on the edge of a college campus, but its surprisingly empty.
I kind of prefer the way they hand out energy. It seems like a common daily reward or reward for walking, which makes it feel like I’m “earning” it over just getting it doled out to me. It’s a small difference,but important.
The issue I’ve been having with being accused of driving seems to be linked to my habit of swapping out to read a page of a book or whatever: When I open the app, swap out to Kindle or whatever, and swap back in the sudden GPS update makes the app think I’m driving.
I’ve gotten this just from walking too fast.
I may have walked too fast once, but I doubt I walk too fast that often.
Especially when walking with Sir Sniffs-a-lot.
I just unlocked tower chamber V.
I may have tried to persuade Noodle to take certain walk paths to get me the stuff needed for daily goals this weekend. I was not succesful.
He did get to meet a couple horses, goats, a cow, and a little girl, but that was unrelated.
1 Like
I got an ad on my phone to switch phone carriers and get a bunch of HPWU stuff. Interesting way to spend advertising money.
Starting this week, sitting on top of a greenhouse isn’t so bad. They give spell energy every time now! I’m doing a lot more wizarding challenges because I sit on a greenhouse and two fortresses at work.
Hopefully they fixed a recurring bug where the ‘celebration’ screen when you leveled in a specific collectible family (I hope that description makes sense to the players… I’m guessing everyone else is SOL!) was apparently sometimes spawned behind everything else, so you couldn’t exit it other than resetting the game. Very annoying.
If I get the right dog walk routines in I can do the Daily Goal reliably. It requires a walk or other visit to a location where I can snag a couple inns (Actually, it’s an Inn and a Greenhouse, so I have to hit the Inn twice) and another walk in the opposite direction to a local Fortress.
Traveling has been interesting: The beach trip we did a couple weeks ago was not too packed with sites (but certainly had some) and I didn’t think to check the Renn Fest until the day (and my battery) were nearly done. The Renn Fest, predictably, had a ton of spots. The MD Renn Fest is kind of infamous for ‘landmarks’ that have accumulated over the years so it’s easy to make points of interest. And, of course, there’s more than a few knock-off Potter goods.
1 Like
The new gifts are interesting to me as they’re the tiniest exception to the (admittedly necessary) policy pr venting data leaks. I guess theoretically a very slow stalker could find the places someone frequents.
I tend to toss gifts at the people I actually know (which means @Nabiki and @Force10) but also anyone else that sends me a gift. It isn’t kinda of fun getting random location shots from people: I’ve seen some recurring and I know I mostly send the same two or three locales most of the time, but every now and then I do send a fun one. You can totally find out my regular weekend breakfast location if you watch my gifts.