GW2: Colin Johanson understands raiding

Posted on September 17, 2012 by SynCaine

Our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. – Colin Johanson

Cool description of end-game raiding, thanks.

Oh wait he is talking about running dungeons as you play and to ‘other stuff’, because GW2 has no ‘end-game’ so tuning your build for endgame and getting your raid-comp correct does not exist.

Well expect if you want to actually run dungeons I guess? And then just feel free to pay that respec cost and reset your build every time you are not running a dungeon? And hope the four others you are with do the same?

Fun…

(Keen has a good breakdown of the situation, and the comments of others in that post reflect many of my feelings as well.)

Posted in Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant | 7 Comments

Wallet vote

Posted on September 15, 2012 by SynCaine

I don’t often link to Kickstarter projects because while a lot of ideas sound great, we all know a great idea is not enough to actually make a great game.

With that said, when people with experience making games like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale tell me they want to make a game like Baldur’s Gate but with an updated engine and no publisher bullshit limiting the content… TAKE MY MONEY NOW.

 

Posted in Random | 14 Comments

GW2: Dead on the inside

Posted on September 14, 2012 by SynCaine

Everything just kinda plays/unlocks itself. – kalex716

I think this describes why GW2 feels like an enjoyably meh experience to me right now. I like each piece of content, to varying degrees, but as soon as I close GW2 the experience is completely forgettable. I’ve not once logged off with my adrenaline still pumping like I have from so many encounters in games like UO, DF, or EVE. Hell, logging off after a successful guild-first boss kill in WoW did more for me. The same goes for starting up GW2; rather than being excited to progress, I just kinda zombie around in the game, ever-progressing forward towards… something.

The lack of in-game report-style posts here and on blogs I read just confirms this: it’s not bad exactly, but it’s not anything to write home (blog) about either.

Part of the problem is the lack of challenge. Or rather, the lack of meaningful challenge. Yes, certain encounters in the dungeons are frustratingly hard (or bugged/broken), but when you overcome them it’s more of a relief than a sense of accomplishment because most likely you just abused the systems enough to win. Plus the knowledge that once these encounters are ‘tuned’, they will fall in line with the rest of the cakewalk experience makes the whole thing a self-inflicted punishment for pixels more than anything else.

As for the rest of the PvE? Forehead-smash to the num-pad will earn you the same gold medal in an event that min-maxing the hell of our character would. Aside from becoming a master at rolling around (which itself feels incredibly lame in a world of heat-seeking arrows and lava pools that don’t hurt if you roll through them), the combat system is the same hotbar smashfest as in previous games, with the occasional combo going off to do… not much of anything actually, because stuff dies whether you pull them off or not.

In addition to a lack of challenge (lvl 65 now, still facerolling all PvE including events. When exactly does it get harder?), GW2 seriously lacks anything resembling a meaningful decision. Crafting? Do them all! Collecting? Everyone collect everything! Hunting for resources? Everything is open to everyone! Gear? It rains from the sky so hard and fast it makes WoW’s welfare epic system feel like full-loot PvP! And in the super-rare event that you can’t find an upgrade under your nose? Don’t worry gear has little to no impact on anything but the one area gear was expected not to matter (PvP).

Worst of all you don’t need to plan anything. Nothing you do one day will determine what you do the next, and regardless of your path, you will eventually reach the same end-point as everyone else. The journey will largely be forgettable with none of your decisions impacting anything anyway. Oh sorry, you get a medal at the login screen. Wheee…

In the oddest sense, GW2 has zero progression. Sure you gain XP and world completion % and such, but it feels like regardless of what you do, you will get there anyway. It’s very Farmville actually. Whether you log in or not, click the right button or wrong, your pixels just keep ‘growing’ regardless. It truly has that “just show up and get a prize” feel, rather than being something that requires effort or ability.

I’ve seen it written a few times now that GW2 is catering to the ultra-casual player, the mythical creature who does not notice gear stats or character builds, nor does anything resembling an intelligent approach to a game. They just materialize from thin air, buy a ton of stuff from the cash shop, and play for ‘fun’. (Because everyone else is not playing for fun…) I don’t doubt that such people exits. It’s a bit scary, but it’s sadly true. But if you have not been lobotomized yet, GW2 has a serious lack of hooks, challenge, or purpose for an MMO.

GW2 is a very pretty, polished, and lovingly detailed toy. Sadly the only thing you can do with it is look and admire the craftsmanship for a bit before returning to play with your Lego kit that you got five years ago.

Posted in Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant | 40 Comments

The MMO genre is a niche space, entry 25603

Posted on September 14, 2012 by SynCaine

“TSW was not buggier than, say, GW2. Nor did it lack things to do.” – tithian

“Personally I found TSW to be sub-par in both combat and graphics, and far inferior to GW2 in game flow. In the beta the “things to do” mostly involved a lot of variations of very slowly killing grey zombies in a grey town / landscape.” – Tobold

“I think you’re proving lono’s point. If it doesn’t have vibrant fantasy settings with flashy combat, dragons and elves, the attention something gets is the fraction of MMO X that does deliver on that front. And guess what, your next MMO will also have a vibrant fantasy setting. And the next, and the next…” – thegaiaengines

Original post and more comments can be found here.

This somewhat reminds me of when Darkfall came out and certain people complained that looting was ‘broken’ or ‘poorly designed’ because you had to drag items off a corpse, or that the combat was unresponsive because there was a delay between drawing your weapon and swinging. That the world was ‘empty’ because not every corner had a pre-scripted purpose for existing, and that the only way to compete in PvP was to max out everything just to ‘catch up’.

On a larger scale, it reinforces the fact that the core of the MMO genre is very niche, but that because of WoW, we have a very large section of players who don’t like niche (or need to be brought into the niche with baby steps, because change is scary!) GW2 right now is stuck in an awkward mid-point, with some systems clearly designed for the masses (hotbar spam-to-win, guided progression, easy leveling) while others could be considered core (insane grind at 80 for gear, sPvP, advanced WvW tactics).

The biggest difference between Darkfall and The Secret World is not levels of polish or innovation, but in expectations. Aventurine understood they were making a niche MMO, and planned accordingly. They hit their target, profited, and because of that we are getting a sequel ‘soon’. Funcom being Funcom, they expected their niche MMO to retain a million subscribers, and because of this TSW is failing. Had the bar been correctly set at, say, 100k subs, TSW would be considered a hit. Feel free to blame Blizzard for this if it makes you feel better (it usually does for me).

Finally, let’s talk about this shall we:

“You are allowed to want both an innovative game AND fun game without it being hypocritical, just like you can want a cheap, good steak (or whatever).” – Azuriel

Az, do you walk into McDonalds looking for a good, cheap steak? How’s that workin’ out for ya? There is a reason a good steakhouse charges what it charges, while at the same time McD’s has served billions with $5 ‘steaks’.

Before they went south, Blizzard was famous for bringing out extremely polished titles, and talent aside, they were able to do this because their titles played it safe and at most took other’s ideas one small step forward. Good business if you can do it, but it only works if you also have other studios pushing the envelope and innovating. There would be no WoW without UO/EQ1, and a major reason WoW was so polished compared to EQ1 was due to that evolution vs revolution approach. The EQ1 devs had little to go off of (MUDs), while Blizzard was able to copy/paste/polish EQ1 to make WoW.

It’s all shades of gray of course. You can’t just put out the world’s most innovative title and expect success if it’s so buggy no one can load it (not at the mass-market level anyway), while at the same time JUST polishing is not enough. After all, while WoW was very much a EQ1 clone, Blizzard did bring a few new ideas to the table, and those few ideas were pretty solid at the time.

But the more you innovate, the further you step out of the known, the higher the chance of something not working as expected. The core MMO players will (generally) roll with it and expect a fix (or exploit the hell out of it until said fix arrives), but the mass-market gamers don’t have that kind of tolerance, patience, and overall investment to stick with a title as it grows.

But then, that’s why the MMO genre is a niche, with WoW being the awkward outlier.

Posted in Darkfall Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | 11 Comments

GW2: To scale or not to scale

Posted on September 13, 2012 by SynCaine

GW2 scaling in many ways makes the whole leveling process somewhat silly.

You return to where you started but the local bandits are still just as tough as their far more senior members in later zones. No matter how legendary your accomplishments or gear, you are only as strong as everything around you (except in WvW…)

The game NOT scaling in some cases makes including leveling troublesome.

Complete a map to 100% a few levels above the recommended level, and the reward is lacking. Run a dungeon a few levels after you can, and the reward is lacking, while the difficulty is locked. Crafting XP scales, but not the stats of what you craft.

The game scaling inappropriately in one direction or another is an unbalanced pain in the ass.

Return to a certain area in a certain zone, and it’s a death trap for at-level characters or lvl 80s. Return to another area, and its god-mode. Certain skills down/up-levels are also ridiculously broken. If you find something initially too hard, pray that the scaling gods are kind when you return (especially if the situation is a forced solo like story quests)

Anet has a lot of work to do.

Posted in Guild Wars, Rant | 33 Comments

EVE: Vile Rat

Posted on September 12, 2012 by SynCaine

Many sites have better posts than I could write about the real life death of EVE player Vile Rat, so I’ll just link to one piece in case anyone reads this site and might have missed it. Obviously tragic and terribly sad news.

Posted in EVE Online, Mass Media, Random | Comments Off on EVE: Vile Rat

GW2: An ‘explorers’ dream

Posted on September 11, 2012 by SynCaine

Short musing for today: The ‘explorers’ who love GW2 for rewarding ‘exploring’ when they ‘find’ all of the points of interest and such in a zone and getting the “you got it all” chest.

That’s not being an explorer. That’s being an achiever chasing the shiny at the end of the grind checklist.

Mass market MMO fans: say one thing, do the opposite.

Edit: The ‘discovery’ system in GW2 crafting fits here as well.

Posted in crafting, Guild Wars, Rant | 37 Comments

EVE: A POS to call my home

Posted on September 10, 2012 by SynCaine

Another Jester-lead post for today (GW2 thoughts are brewing, but I can’t quite place my finger on them just yet. Something-something themepark though), this time about the next EVE expansion, and expansions/patches in general.

Jester is worried that much like last year, EVE players are going to be slowly simmering (or perhaps raging) due to a lack of focus on spaceships. I’d have a hard time arguing with him given the current unknowns about the next release, and the potential for it to be little more than “hey Dust is here”. While significant from a tech perspective and good long-term (assuming Dust does well, which I believe it will), if all you care about are spaceships, it’s not a lot to write home about short-term.

But really, if you take a step back, what has the last year done for EVE? How game-changing were Crucible and Inferno? They both included a lot of nice updates and changes, but nothing to really get excited about like the addition of wormhole space or incursions. To me they represented CCP doing some long overdue housecleaning. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s something you need to do and once done, allows you to finally move on.

The problem now is that the ‘move on’ aspect seems to be focused mostly on Dust, and as stated above, core EVE players that only care about spaceships are not going to find that all too exciting. Furthermore, Dust connecting to EVE is also not a game-changer for someone not currently playing EVE and looking for a reason to sign up or return. What CCP needs now is… wait for it… a Jesus feature.

Or at least something major that gets current players excited to play with something new, and potential players to notice and go “hey, that sounds interesting, I need to go check it out”. Which is basically how I regard other MMO updates I read on Massively; unless it’s some major feature that sounds interesting, updates and tweaks don’t interests me at all and I move on. To grab my attention, you need something major. I’m sure I’m not alone on this.

The key to me is striking a balance between keeping your MMO current and in-shape, while also attracting new players or getting former players to return for another go. We have seen far too many MMO devs panic and give up on their current base to chase a mythical “other group”, and one of the major reasons CCP has been so successful with EVE for 9+ years is they have stayed true to the games core and allowed growth to be more natural rather than buying into feature X bringing in a totally new crowd (if we ignore Incarna anyway).

So what Jesus feature should CCP ‘add’?

Redo how Player Owned Structures (POSs) work, turning them from something everyone hates but tolerates into a major goal almost everyone strives for. Because let’s be honest, does anything strike the “pride of playing” cord stronger than owning MMO property in a virtual world? I loved my house in UO, loved owning property in Darkfall, and SWG players will gush about their player cities. Does any EVE player write lovingly about setting up a POS, or how they love hanging out in their high or lowsec POS ‘home’? Does anyone even call it that? Hell even in WH space, we identify more with the current WH we occupy than the POS we live out of.

Redo the feature so it functions more like the housing in UO, where a player can customize the look and function in a modular way (I believe CCP has hinted at this already, but they should be making a full-court push IMO), and make it so its intuitive and easy rather than a strong contestant for most painful activity in EVE (which is saying something).

Make it so owning a small POS, even in highsec, is an achievable goal even for newish players (6 months or so), and something Corporations can collaborate on to gain additional benefits or comforts. Make them look cool, provide something wanted, and perhaps even integrate them into a form of gameplay around avatars like Incarna should have.

Oh, and do it sooner than ‘soon’.

Posted in crafting, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Housing, MMO design, Ultima Online | 6 Comments

EVE: The highsec player does not exist

Posted on September 6, 2012 by SynCaine

I like this post by Jester about highsec refining and production, and it brings up an aspect of the game that I think many misunderstand: the highsec player. Or rather, that “the highsec player” does not exist as a single entity. In my opinion there are two distinct groups of players who occupy high-sec space in EVE: those who enjoy highsec life itself, and those who are in highsec because it’s the best place to be for their needs.

The first group can’t (at least through pure game mechanics changes) be moved out of highsec into low/null/WH space. The only place they will move is to another game if forced, and much if not all anti-highsec arguments fail to recognize this. Simply put, if you make highsec too undesirable, these players will not make the move to other areas, they will simply leave. They enjoy highsec for what it is, a mostly non-PvP space devoid of the troubles that plague other areas, be it random PvP roams, sov-loss, WH invasions, whatever. They like the game CCP has created in highsec.

How large this group is I’m not sure, but I’d be willing to bet it’s substantial. Furthermore, while this group has no interest in other areas of EVE, this does not mean they simply take up space and don’t influence low/null/WH space. They do, and in many ways. Be it filling up markets, producing goods, buying PvE-based goods, or any number of smaller impacts, highsec players ‘count’ just as much as the average Goon or AHARM member in the grant scheme of EVE. They also need content updates like everyone else, and I hope CCP is aware of this (I’d argue that the CSM is not, just based on what I’ve read from them).

The second group in highsec are those who would be or are interesting in other aspects of EVE, but live or operate in highsec because it’s the best location for what they want to accomplish. As Jester accurately points out, in many ways, highsec is better than all other spaces for certain activities, and so those who intend to take the path of least resistance find themselves in highsec. This is where the design flaw exists.

When Incursions where overpaying (or were perceived to be overpaying, depending on who you believe), those who wanted to generate ISK with the least resistance ran highsec Incursions, even if they were nullsec alliance members or lowsec pirates. Yet even at this point, Incursion income still did not top C6 WH income, which is why for those willing to take the risks and deal with the troubles (not the path of least resistance) the space was still worthwhile. Had Incursions been as imbalanced as highsec production, few if any pilots would be running C6 sleeper sites, and everyone interested in making ISK would own a specifically fit Nightmare.

The key to moving this second group out of highsec is not to crush highsec itself, but to make the other spaces offer rewards equal to their risks. If production is harder in lowsec because of pirates, it should also be better when done successful, much like C6 WH sites are compared to lvl4 highsec missions or, to a lesser degree, Incursions. Nullsec ores vs highsec ores is an attempt at this, but due to mineral values and the risk/reward ratio, things are not working as well as they should. The same goes for nullsec PvE content, or lowsec PI.

If the areas of the game that are deemed not worthwhile get a boost, the players who currently operate in highsec would move, much like they have with the current imbalance around Faction Warfare sites. At the same times, those with no interest in non-highsec would continue to play and enjoy the game they currently have. The key to any solution is to influence the second group, without crushing the first.

(And as I’ve personally experienced, with the right social structure, motivation, and incentive, even some of those “highsec-only” players can learn to expand their horizons, which I think long-term is why EVE has been so successful.)

Posted in crafting, EVE Online, MMO design, PvP | 30 Comments

GW2: Review at the midpoint

Posted on September 5, 2012 by SynCaine

I hit level 41 last night on my Human Elementalist. In that time I’ve completed (all items checked) three zones, done all storyline quests up to my level, have two crafting skills to 130ish, ran the first instance in Story Mode, done a bit of WvW, and completed two cities. I also have an alt at lvl 12 that I’m playing along with my wife.

Let me just get this out of the way: GW2 is a fun game. It’s worth the $60. It’s a solid MMO and a good step towards what all themepark MMOs should play like. It has its flaws, but none of those flaws (save one, WvW queues) are crippling or have a seriously negative impact on your enjoyment overall. Anet has some work to do, but what is there now is very good.

Some of the highlights:

Classes play differently in a substantial way. Even my Elementalist (ranged magic) plays different from my Ranger (ranged physical), which is a huge credit to Anet. Double bonus for how classes play in group situations. A lot of people make a big deal of the holy trinity not being present, but the real major step here is that every combo of classes brings something different but still viable to the table (at least for PvE and WvW. I’m sure in 5v5 min-maxing is king). Playing your class well is also noticeable, which is great.

Except.

That you can still skill-smash 95% of the PvE and progress (at least to 40, blablabla it gets harder), and in large-scale WvW player skill falls to the all-mighty zerg. (Programing note: In Darkfall even in a zerg player skill matters, a lot, so the idea that in every MMO zerg>skill is wrong and should not be accepted as a simple truth.) At the end of the day, GW2 is still a mass-market themepark, and while it’s a very good one, it would be silly to assume niche-market design, which player-skill>zerg is most definitely a design decision. Not a huge detractor from the fun, but worth mentioning.

Zone design is mostly solid. While the areas within a zone are grouped by level ranges, they are not as hard and fast as in most themeparks, and you will find yourself going back and criss-crossing often. This gives the zones a fake-life feel. They are still zones that don’t have any impact on the world (there is no world), but the smoke and mirrors are high quality.

The big thing I’ve noticed is that certain zones have a LOT more content than others, especially in terms of events. Those zones really keep you busy, while the less-designed zones play more like a hub-to-hub themepark.

Gear is plentiful and easy to acquire, while at the same time feeling like it makes little impact. Upgrading to a Master-level weapon five levels better than my old one was not noticeable. I’d say this would be a negative, but with the way GW2 combat plays, it does not bother me all that much. I’m more focused on kiting while dropping skills than looking at the numbers that pop up, and mobs tend to die at a similar pace whether I’ve just upgraded or I’m due for one.

WvW is a lot of fun and is well designed. I’ll cover this in more detail in its own post, but from what I’ve experienced so far Anet got a lot of things right, including the all-important scoring system. That said, the one massive issue is the queues. The Eternal Battleground is well named, because that’s how long the queue for it is on our server, and the three side zones also feature lengthy (1hr+) waits. As more players hit 80, this will only get worse (unless the game itself fails and people drift away at a clip faster than new ones come in, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. GW2 is a good game). It’s also bad enough when trying to get in solo, but organizing a guild group is basically impossible unless everyone has a 2hr+ chunk of time.

The tricky part about the queues is how different servers feel about WvW. Our server was pre-planned to be a powerhouse, with both Darkfall and DAoC guilds/alliances joining. We all enjoy PvP, and we wanted to play with and against quality opponents. The derpfest that is going to happen at the bottom of the server rankings is not something we want to be a part of, but in return we get horribly long queues. Bad design, and something Anet hopefully fixes soon by increase the cap. The derp servers will derp amongst themselves anyway, while the top-end servers will have plenty of people to fill out WvW even at 150 or 200 caps. The zones are big enough to handle that, and people can always transfer off non-WvW servers if that’s something they really care about.

I’ve talked about ‘dynamic’ ‘events’ before, and at level 40 I’ll just repeat myself: they are, at times, interesting quest chains that you forget as soon as the UI fades away, while still being flawed thanks to current player zerging of zones. Missing the ‘world’ ‘event’ stuff is not game-breaking, but for that much design effort to be spent for so little reward right now is less-than-optimal. They are overall slightly better than WAR’s PQs, but not by much. That said some of the dialog or fluff around them is cute and solid attention to details. 99% of the player base will totally miss all of that though.

GW2 crafting is themepark crafting. It’s a gold sink and a grind, and the rewards are meh. Discovery is completely forgettable other than being an XP boost. I’ve always said MMO crafting is more about the ‘what’ than the ‘how’, and the ‘what’ in GW2 is as flawed or pointless as it was in WoW and all other themeparks.

The UI is overall great and very responsive. That said, why do crafting mats go into your bags? You can already one-click send them to your bank, so why not just have them automatically go there? Must I really open my bag every few minutes to click the little gear icon? Also wtf is the point of crafting-specific bags that are the same size but require more mats as a regular bag under this system? Other games have those for a reason, but GW2 lacks it.

The one dungeon I ran was interesting, and played very different from a traditional themepark instance. More on that in another post as well.

So again, GW2 is solid and worth your money. It’s the direction I’d like to see themeparks go if themeparks must exist. But MMO Jesus it is not, and cancer has yet to be cured. Anet has some work to do, and they have already had some missteps like getting ban-happy over nothing or over-fixing karma gear pricing (lvl 40 gear for 9600 karma is silly).

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Guild Wars, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP, RvR, Warhammer Online | 21 Comments