GW2: Pre-80 vs post-80

Posted on September 26, 2012 by SynCaine

How can you spot if someone has reached the level cap in GW2? Ask if they still like the game.

While for some time now themeparks have been two different games, the leveling aspect and the ‘end-game’, the change in GW2 is IMO by far the most drastic. And it’s drastic not because you go from solo-questing to forced-grouped raiding, but because the exact content you found compelling and rewarding at 79 instantly turns into flawed meh at 80. It’s shocking if you have not come to accept that progression = success for an MMO. And if you are among those who do not, feel free to look at successful MMOs of the past and draw a link as to why those games worked long-term. (Hint: progression that matters) Even easier, just look at recent failures and identify the trend.

And I think this is where I lose people when I say GW2 is a shitty MMO, because NOT fading after the (very short in GW2) leveling game is a critical metric. It’s one of the key things that make a game an MMO. Lots of games in lots of genres are solid to great short-term. On that criteria, GW2 is not the worst way to spend 40-60 hours. It’s not the best this year, or even really on the same level as something like Skyrim, but it’s not Superman64 by any means.

The issue I have is that not only did Anet call GW2 an MMO, but they (yes they, not fans) hyped the product not only as an MMO, but an MMO that ‘fixes’ so many wrongs of the genre. And yes, they succeeded in some regards (the overall “players are your friend, not the enemy” thing is well done), but the trouble is they failed in the most critical area. Being nice to others or having lots of options in terms of where to level or how to get gear or where to collect crafting mats is all pointless when, once you hit 80, it all does nothing for you.

MMO content, GW2 very much included, is not good enough on its own. Put the average GW2 quest next to an average Skyrim quest and Skyrim wins 10 times out of 10. The reason you would pick GW2 is because you can do that quest with others in a world where doing that quest ‘matters’ long-term. It’s why people mine in EVE when mining in EVE might be the worst gameplay in all of gaming. You progress, and that progression makes doing silly/bad/terrible things worthwhile. Molten Core was not awesome-enough content to justify running it 500 times. It could easily be argued that if you removed progression, few would ever run MC once, let alone return. But you ran it 500 times because you, along with 39 others, had a lot of fun hanging out and bashing your collective heads into the next raiding wall, and damn it, you needed that .01% crit chance upgrade from MC to do it.

If you hate the above that’s fine. If you expect or even want to go from one game to the next each month, that’s cool. But understand that’s not how the MMO genre as many know it works. Titles tagged as an MMO have diluted this, as have other unfortunate trends. But unless you accept a very different definition of what an MMO is and what makes an MMO work, GW2 does not measure up, no matter how good the first few hours are.

Posted in Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant | 51 Comments

EVE: Learning curve

Posted on September 25, 2012 by SynCaine

Note: Not all MMOs shown are still popular

The above is a little old (PotBS…) but is still often used. EVE, compared to most MMOs, is indeed a tough game to get into and stick with. However in terms of tutorials and explaining the basics of a very complex game, I believe what CCP has in place today is about as good as it’s going to get, and all of the UI enhancements of late have lowered that bar as well (it’s still higher-than-average, but at this point that’s due more to the game’s complexity than the UI getting in your way).

What keeps the above image true is the sandbox nature of EVE; by design it does not hold your hand and show you all of the pretty sites like a themepark, and for many that lack of guidance results in them getting lost and ultimately leaving. Of course it’s tough to admit the failure is on the player, which is why more often than not you will get skewed or simply inaccurate accounts shortly before or after someone leaves (assuming they don’t just fade away without a peep).

One example I’ve seen play out over and over is the ambitious miner. A new player to EVE will go down the mining career path and plan to fly the biggest and best ship for mining. They initially enjoy the slower pace, as well as the ISK and the small market gameplay that goes with it. They are playing EVE like a themepark, ‘gearing up’ and working towards that BiS ship. Problem is, once they hit that goal, or get close enough to see what hitting it will be like, they get bored.

For them, progression has stopped or slowed to a crawl, and they are left wondering “now what?” If they don’t come up with a good answer, they are done. The same cycle exists for the high-sec mission running when he gets into a faction battleship, or for the trader once he gets ‘enough’ ISK.

The problem with all those goals is they are not only short-sighted, but they also just provide you with a tool (ISK) to do ‘something’ with. Mining/mission/trade efficiency is not itself content. The reason you mine or run those missions is you can then turn around use that ISK to do X. If you can’t fill in X, and keep filling in X once your first initiative is complete or gets stale, you will drift away. The advantage EVE has over anything else on the market is the sheer number of choices, and the depth that many can go to.

And in EVE, the biggest source of X is other players, be it alliance-level combat or working with other traders to corner a market or create a new hub. As you get more involved, bigger and longer-term goals start to creep up, and you end up having TOO much to do vs having nothing. This is easily identified by your current training plan; if it’s full and you had to make tough choices, you are sucked in. If you are training aimlessly or just finishing stuff up, you likely lack solid goals (or have a super-advanced pilot, but EVE veterans tend to stick around as the metrics have shown in the past).

I don’t really think the problem can be fully solved, at least not at a mass-market scale. This, ultimately, is why the MMO genre is a niche; the number of people capable and willing to find, set, and follow-through on goals is limited. At the same time, the formula itself clearly works, as EVE’s upcoming 10 year anniversary attests to.

Ultimately it’s all a balance between handholding and mass-market, and inversely retention and longevity. If you are interested in selling a ton of boxes and getting a huge one-month pop, you go one way. If you aim to entertain for 10+ years, you go in the other direction. The middle is either a gold mine or a total disaster, depending on countless factors, not all of which you can control.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design | 23 Comments

UO turns 15

Posted on September 25, 2012 by SynCaine

Good read from Raph about the early days of UO, which recently turned 15 years old. Which is likely older than the average age of today’s WoW players. Which is scary in many ways.

Posted in Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Comments Off on UO turns 15

GW2: One step forward, two steps back for the genre

Posted on September 24, 2012 by SynCaine

Keen has a report card out for GW2, and while I think the grades are a bit high, I agree overall with his assessment. In short, GW2 is a good game, but a month in its pretty clear GW2 is a very shitty MMO. If you are keeping score at home, you will notice a trend here in the last few years.

I’ll start with this, because I think it’s important to keep in mind when considering any ‘MMO’: If the ‘MMO’ does not have a sub fee, it’s the developers telling you they don’t believe people will find the game good enough to pay $15 a month for. PR can spin it any way they want, but the fact remains that you only stop being a sub game (or never start) if you suspect or know people won’t give you the money. WoW is WoW because enough people still believe it’s worth it, and that is why Blizzard still has their money tree. F2P ‘works’ because a few people can’t help themselves and spend a fortune while most don’t spend a dime. That should tell you all you need to know about the MMO in question.

Back to GW2. As mentioned numerous times, it’s a solid game. Most things work, it looks good, and occasionally it will do something unexpected or above-average to surprise you. Yay.

The problems hit at level 80, which unfortunately comes almost instantly so long as you login a few times. Once you hit 80 and hit the AH once, you are done progressing. Yes, there is still a lot of ‘stuff’ to do, but none of it is going to open anything new up for you or give you new toys to play with. The only form of progression is collecting cute outfits to play dress-up with, and if that’s your thing, awesome, but I suspect for most it’s not. It certainly has not been historically on this side of the ocean.

On top of the above, which is very critical, is the fact that while GW2 has a lot of content, almost all of it is the same. ‘Dynamic’ events are not only not dynamic, but for the most part are just reskins of each other. If you have seen one “collect X” event, you have seen them all. Kill invaders, collect stuff, kill big bad. Which ‘chain’ did I just describe? Half of them, in all zones.

And not only is the content just reskinned, but the method to defeat it is the same since about level 30 as well. Regardless of your class, you will likely end up using the same skills and tactics against everything, and those tactics will always work. For most events, it’s as simple as “spam big AoE attack to tag mobs, collect loot”. On occasion you will need to dodge, maybe. And yes, it’s like that until the final Orr zone, so don’t buy into the “it gets more complicated later” BS either.

For all its hype, the combat system in GW2 might be one of the worst in the themepark genre, if only because of its simplicity and the games total lack of strategic encouragement. You will literally be hitting the same buttons over and over again, brainlessly, and not only will you succeed, but you will actually perform at almost max efficiency. At least in WoW or other themeparks the facerolling only gets you to 50% dps or so, and there is/was content where that was not good enough. In GW2, regardless of what you do, it’s not only always good enough, but doing better is almost impossible.

WvW should be the save grace and the reason to stick around, but again with zero form of progression, the ‘why’ kicks in pretty quickly, and what little ‘server pride’ you might muster up, the queues and off-hours scoring will do a great job of crushing. The scoring is perhaps the saddest part if you think about it: more points are scoring in off-hours than during primetime, which means the ‘best’ servers are not those with the best players, but those that organized to cover all time zones. Makes splitting EU and NA servers apart a total joke.

Worst still is the fact that, because of the combat system and the tiny maps, playing WvW is only a slightly different experience than grinding a generic ‘dynamic event’. Most of it is still AoE spam, and most of the time doing just enough is all that is required. Contrast WvW results to which Alliances succeed in EVE (and how), or which guilds did well in a game like Darkfall, and it becomes very clear that WvW is highly flawed not just at the top, but all the way to its core. There are ways to make MMO PvP work, and what GW2 has is very, very far from that.

Which brings up the ultimate question; would I pay for new content? I think the answer is no, because I don’t imagine the new content playing like anything but more of the same due to the game’s core flaws, and I still have some of that content untouched as is should I want it, which I don’t.

It’s sadly funny that the more current-day devs try to evolve MMOs, the further they go from what actually makes the games work.

Posted in Combat Systems, Guild Wars, MMO design, PvP, Rant, RMT, RvR | 65 Comments

GW2: End-game woes

Posted on September 21, 2012 by SynCaine

Remember that ultra-casual MMO that just came out? Hey turns out more people queue up for the PvP in that game than the number of people who raided in WoW (by % of the population). Who could have predicted that? Answer: Not Anet. Whoops.

And hey, it’s not like a queue of 300 or 400 people is that bad anyway. Oh right, only 100 people get in at a time, so a queue of 3x or 4x the total size might be a problem. From personal experience it makes setting up a guild night of WvW a blast…

That said, I’m sure it will get better once everyone hits 80, because at that point you have access to the wonderful world of GW2 dungeons. Wait what? Everyone hates your dungeons and is doing anything possible to skip them while you do everything possible to stop them, even while at the same time you acknowledged that the rewards suck? Whoops x2.

The good thing is Anet planned ahead, and allowed anyone who wanted to bandwagon on the winning side to do so for free, which I’m sure is making everyone on HoD really happy. But hey, please transfer off a server with coordinated WvW and derp around with the derps near the bottom. Instance derp access everyone!

I’m sure tons of guilds are going to take Anet up on that offer, especially considering the amount of effort that went into setting up servers like HoD and JQ in the first place. Silly us for thinking Anet planned ahead for people playing their endgame in a game that almost instantly puts you at endgame and gives you basically nothing else to focus on (playing Barbie is not doing it for PvP players, weird).

Posted in Guild Wars, PvP, Rant | 36 Comments

DF:UW – Totally fresh

Posted on September 19, 2012 by SynCaine

Let’s assume AV does not hold any kind of beta for DF:UW.

This would mean that everyone would be blind on day one of go-live in terms of locations, tactics, builds, and just general game info. The mass confusion and searching would only last for so long, but still, that might be worth a bug or three.

Something to think about at least.

Posted in beta, Darkfall Online | 8 Comments

Darkfall Unholy War: The what and the why

Posted on September 19, 2012 by SynCaine

It would seem the recent Darkfall: Unholy War (DF:UW) announcement has caused some confusion, so consider this my public service in attempting to clear some things up. Note that most of this is just personal speculation based on what AV has released and from what I’ve observed. My personal batphone to AV HQ is currently undergoing maintenance.

The biggest question seems to be is DF:UW a totally new game?

The answer is no. It’s more like what Mount and Blade 2 was to the original.  It’s still the same engine that DF1 used, but updated with the new lighting and sound systems (among other updates). The gameplay will likely feel very similar, which is good considering DF1 had the best combat in MMO history (fact not opinion), but with additions like crosshair wobble and momentum, which hopefully works like Mount and Blade (best combat system period).

The world itself has been revamped and reworked, but expect it to look and feel similar, but hopefully better in terms of hamlet/city balance and overall flow. I would expect to see many of the same monsters, but again with some additions and tweaks behavior.

So why is DF:UW being pitched as a new game instead of an expansion to DF1?

My speculation here is that AV wants a fresh start for everyone, themselves included. I consider DF1 to be the 3-year open paid beta for DF:UW, and like any beta, everything gets wiped and everyone starts fresh come release.

Using the above theory, my hope is that AV has been internally testing the new features coming in DF:UW, while using the last three years of DF1 to work out the major engine bugs. This should lead to a smoother launch for DF:UW, although I still fully expect some major hiccups given the nature of the sandbox genre and… well AV being AV (small indie studio biting off more than they sometimes should). Hopefully we see a beta for DF1 players soon to really hammer it and get it ready.

So if this is just an expansion, what’s the big deal?

For all its faults, DF1 did a lot of things right, especially if you consider what the MMO genre as a whole has looked like of late. The biggest non-failure of the last three years has been a game with no end-game (more on that in another post), which is really, really not saying much. What AV is doing with DF:UW is giving everyone who liked or wanted to like the idea of DF but hated the bugs, exploits, or some of the silly gameplay (AoE magic spam, bunnyhopping, mount boots, or whatever FOTM was OP at the time) another chance to start fresh, and (hopefully) this time not be turned away. It will still be a FFA full-loot player-skill-based PvP MMO, so it will certainly still be a niche title, but that niche is larger than what DF1 ultimately retained post-launch.

According to info from AV, anyone who purchased DF1 will get DF:UW for free, which if still true will guarantee a very sizable player pool for day one. Even with all its bugs and server issues, DF1 with a high population was amazing, and remained so for longer than current-day MMOs stay with the subscription business model, so (again) assuming AV gets it mostly right and DF:UW is as stable as current-day DF1, and they stay active with updated and fixes as they had in the first year, there will be a sizable playerbase and the game should once again be an absolute blast to play for those who enjoy that style of MMO. It’s not like you have a lot of options anyway.

Plus if nothing else, I’m sure Eurogamer will have a glowing review with 100% factual accuracy, and well-informed bloggers will no doubt produce insightful posts about the game. That alone is reason to be excited.

Hopefully more soon, especially if that damn batphone gets fixed.

Posted in beta, Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, MMO design, PvP | 5 Comments

GW2: Another voice of the WvW problems

Posted on September 18, 2012 by SynCaine

INQ co-leader Maggnus wrote a good post on the current WvW problems. I agree 100%.

Posted in Guild Wars, MMO design, PvP | 9 Comments

DarkFall 2 is actually going to happen?

Posted on September 18, 2012 by SynCaine

Save me from the meh AV, save me.

Second honeymoon to Greece time!

PS: Tasos looking jacked huh?

Posted in Darkfall Online | 22 Comments

GW2: Broken Jack of Trades

Posted on September 17, 2012 by SynCaine

GW2 has a serious identity crisis. Is it an ultra-casual MMO that rewards everyone for everything? Is it an e-sport title for competitive 5v5 teams? Is it an updated DAoC focused on RvR? Is it a WoW clone, or the next big MMO evolution?

Sadly, it’s all of the above, sorta. Or at least, it’s a game with all of the above components, but currently strongly lacks a way to make them all play nice with each other.

Azuriel covers the broken economy well. I’d only ask who thought GW2 was going to have an economy worth a damn in the first place? What I mean is that MMOs with real economies, like EVE, have them because the economy is a major source of content. There are people who play EVE doing nothing BUT economy-based activities, and they have been doing them for years. If Anet ‘fixes’ the economy in GW2, what exactly is the end goal here? Is anyone going to be playing the GW2 economy full-time if they do?

I quickly noted the problem with GW2’s “it’s not endgame but play it like end-game” dungeons earlier today. If GW2 really is the ultra-casual MMO that some claim it to be now, why is the game’s director telling me to start min-maxing and everything will be fine?

And if the goal really is to min-max at 80, can I at least have the tools to do it? My WvW build is trash for solo PvE, and Colin tells me I need a different build if I want to run dungeons. And as fun as respec costs are, didn’t themeparks solve this problem a few years ago? Of course, even if I could dual-spec, I’d still be lugging around gear-sets, which in GW2 is a major problem given bag space. Oh I could fix that by spending some money in the cash shop? How ‘convenient’. F2P model driving game design down the tubes, news at 11!

The lack of spec-switching is highlighted by how effective min-maxing can be in a setting like dungeons or WvW. Simply put, someone in a WvW spec with the right gear will run circles (literally and figuratively) against someone with a PvE spec and PvE gear. Again, this itself is not a problem, just like a mining barge sucking at PvP is not a problem in EVE. The problem with GW2 is I can’t just dock up the barge and jump into a PvP ship like I can in EVE, at least not by design.

The WvW maps, those ‘giant’ zones Anet proudly showed off pre-release, are too small. The zerg is able to move between points quickly enough to suppress guerilla warfare on all but the lowest value points, and aside from picking off stragglers and ninja-grabbing a supply camp for a few minutes, small groups are left with few options. This is further impacted by specs/gear, resulting in joining the zerg being the best choice more often than not.

And thanks to the persistent queues, switching between maps is not really feasible, meaning you can’t do much but watch as you win your zone but lose the ‘war’. The central map and the three clone maps might as well be different realms for all they matter on any given night, which is frustrating and very un-DAoC.

Once everyone hits 80 and gears up, many of the above issues will disappear. Who cares about the economy when you don’t need to buy anything? Once you have the tokens you need from dungeons, the min-max there is gone. And when you reach the point of being ‘done’ with your character for WvW, only having access to a WvW spec and gear will be ok. Still, it’s all currently a nightmare in terms of design, and will be for anyone joining late or leveling an alt.

Posted in Combat Systems, crafting, Guild Wars, MMO design, PvP, Rant, RMT | 15 Comments