Hitting rocks to build success

Posted on August 13, 2015 by SynCaine

For me the simplest measure of how much you liked a game is how long you played it. I think there is certainly value in a great 10 hour experience, but IMO no matter how great that 10 hours was, a game you spend 100+ hours with is the better game. Even if you disagree on that, I think we can all agree that if you’re a dev for an MMO, you certainly want your players playing for 100+ hours instead of 10.

Right now in the group I’m playing ARK with, there are people who have 2000+ hours spent with the game, which besides being INSANE on a personal playtime level, is an amazing compliment to the longevity of the game and its ability to entertain someone long-term. ARK isn’t an MMO, but if it was, I think it would be a fairly successful one just based on how well it retains people and the amount of time you can spend with its content.

And ARK, besides being RUST+Dinos, is basically a crafting/gathering simulator. Sure, there are other things you do like PvE (kill dinos), PvP (kill players), and PvB (bashing bases), but those activities occupy a minority of your time compared to hitting rocks/trees/bushes, and making stuff from the gains of said rocks/trees/bushes. You build a base to protect your stuff and craft more stuff, and dinos enhance your gathering or ability to protect your stuff from others. In short, given the popularity of not just ARK but games like it, a TON of people love gathering/crafting, and love it enough to do it for a LONG time.

Now the critical part is the motivation behind those basic activities. Much like few if any find mining in EVE thrilling, so many do it because the ‘why’ is worthwhile, not the ‘how’. The same is true for ARK; hitting a rock isn’t thrilling, but what you can eventually make from hitting that rock is very worthwhile, so you hit that rock, and the rock next to it, and the next thousand rocks after that. It also helps that gathering in ARK can both be relaxing in its simplicity (running a low risk, familiar gathering cycle), and occasionally more of an adventure if you go far out into hostile territory with a valuable dino along with you.

What I find absolutely insane about the MMO genre is that, despite these obvious examples of player wants, few if any MMOs cater to this crowd well. Sure, EVE has its mining, and FFXIV might be the best example with its gathering/crafting roles and all of the additional gameplay options related to them, but what about everyone else? Why is gathering/crafting such a footnote and total mess in games like WoW? Why hasn’t someone made ARK, The MMO already? ARK itself is close, but clearly the design intent is to sell the product and allow players to play on various servers, which is a slight but very important difference from playing/paying for an MMO service.

The market is there, by the millions who are willing to play for a long time, and it’s crazy that not only do we not have a full-on crafting/gathering focused MMO (ATitD is the closest, but in all honesty is a pretty poor product overall when compared to the gameplay and features of RUST/ARK), but that so many current MMOs minimize this aspect of the game or outright neglect it. We keep talking about MMOs today lacking longevity, perhaps if we looked at what players DO spend a lot of time doing in other genres, we might be able to return to a time when MMOs lasted longer than a month or so of content consumption.

Posted in ARK, EVE Online, Final Fantasy XIV, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 9 Comments

ARK – Dino fun that is well worth the time investment required

Posted on August 12, 2015 by SynCaine

I wrote before that ARK is RUST with dinosaurs, and that general opinion hasn’t changed. However, I think that statement is somewhat like saying “DayZ is a shooter with zombies”. It’s a true statement, but doesn’t really explain why DayZ is what it is compared to a lot of other shooters with or without zombies, and why DayZ is a mega-hit and some of those other games aren’t.

And much like zombies make a game cool (or did before every game had zombies), there is something interesting and relatable to dinosaurs compared to more generic creatures or monsters. It’s easier to understand the fear behind a T-Rex chasing you or smashing your base compared to the same happening from a pure-fantasy monster, at least for me. In fact, the whole “survival in a harsh world” theme works better when said harsh world is one that is somewhat like the one we know existed on Earth long ago, with all the dinos walking around and whatnot.

Another major aspect that ARK gets right is the amount of time you invest in things. Taming dinos is a major undertaking. For many of the best ones, you have to commit multiple hours straight just to complete the initial tame, and success not only depends on bringing the right materials to get the job done, but also on external factors like a big aggressive dino not coming by and eating your unconscious dino, or you. In addition to that investment of time/effort, there is also however long it takes you to prep the items you will use, and then your dino storage solution (usually a larger containment area in your base). Having a tamed dino is awesome, as they are very functional for both gathering and/or combat, so when you lose one, it really strings.

Building up a larger base is an even more serious commitment, so you really care about its location, setup, and functionality. A lot of planning goes into one, and seeing it take shape and working out the kinks that come up is a great deal of fun and challenge. Similarly, raiding a solid base isn’t a trivial matter, but the rewards can be huge. Such an action can however start a war, and you might quickly find yourself on the receiving end of a raid. Because of the amount of effort involved, raids and wars aren’t done on a whim, and carry a good deal of weight behind them.

Other examples exist, but my larger point is that ARK does a great job in getting you invested in what you are doing, and caring a great deal about all of it. You want to log in the next day to keep progressing forward, because you know forward also means unlocking new systems and items to play with, and to also get further and further invested in what you are doing. It’s a very similar feeling to playing a great MMO, but more on that in another post.

In summary, even though ARK is very similar to other games of its type, so far it has gotten a great deal of the details correct, and because of that the game is a ton of fun even in its early access state (though this is one of those ‘early access’ games that could be released tomorrow and no one would notice its missing anything major). Highly recommended, even if you have recently played something similar.

Posted in ARK | 1 Comment

CoC: Spot open

Posted on August 11, 2015 by SynCaine

Just a quick programming announcement; we currently have a spot open in the Clash of Clans… clan, “Supreme Cream!”. So long as you are active and willing to learn/improve, please apply mentioning the blog.

Posted in Clash of Clans | 4 Comments

HS: New Blizzard’s method of balancing the game is to not balance it at all

Posted on August 10, 2015 by SynCaine

When Blizzard’s MOBA game was first announced, one of the items I wanted to keep an eye on was how well Blizzard would do at balancing the game, because Blizzard is always slow to make changes, and most recently hasn’t been very good at much of anything when they finally DO release something.

Unfortunately HotS is such an abortion I can’t even be bothered to keep up with it on any level, but ‘luckily’ I do keep up with Hearthstone, and can see how well New Blizzard does in balancing that PvP game. Spoiler alert: Not well, not well at all.

First the ‘how often do they balance anything?” question can be answered by this link, showing not only that balance patches don’t come often, but that when they do, they aren’t much of anything anyway.

But beyond the somewhat expected “Blizzard doesn’t do anything quickly” issue, we have this quote from Blizzard I pulled from Az over at In An Age:

“I think we’re going to keep making some crazy cards in every set that are dangerous and hopefully going to work out.”

Another spoiler: It hasn’t worked out. Patron Warrior is an absurdly strong, very easy-to-play deck. It’s also a cheap deck to make (been playing a version myself since the release of the card, before finding out its also a pro-level deck), so perhaps I’ll find the motivation to faceroll myself up the ranks with the refined internet version just to prove that point. Likely spoiler: Won’t happen because my patience with rolling my face across the keyboard is pretty low, especially for no gain other than “SynCaine’s right again”, and that happens so often anyway even I’m growing tired of it.

The biggest problem however isn’t even the strength of that deck (a huge problem), but the fact that in a serious environment where someone cares if they win or lose (which, given how hard Blizzard is trying to push HS as an eSport title, would suggest HS should be considered such a game), having something so strong means other options aren’t viable, which leads to not just a boring pro scene, but a boring game overall.

Imagine if Riot was Blizzard, and left LoL’s champions as brokenly powerful as Patron Warrior in the game; in every pro game you would see that option banned or picked, and if Riot was Blizzard, the pool of viable champions would be a fraction of what it really is today.

The quote above shows a gross misunderstanding of how game balance works in a PvP environment. Players always flock to whats powerful, and they do it so strongly that anyone NOT doing so is simply fodder. Proper balance means not just fixing a broken aspect of your game (Patron Warrior IMO isn’t strong, it’s broken), but also allowing more options for players, and more options means more diversity and a more interesting pro scene. I recently watch (don’t ask why) a few minutes of a HS ‘pro’ broadcast, and deck diversity was a joke. In fact, it was almost as big a joke as the games themselves (insert dice rant here).

As a random, ‘who cares’ game, you can have broken stuff like Patron Warrior exist, because people won’t care enough to win meaningless games and will more focus on finding the fun. But when you push a game as being serious, that changes, and you have to change how you run the game as well. So far, Blizzard is failing horribly in that aspect with HS.

Posted in Random, Rant | 9 Comments

WoW Legion: We get to watch it all burn down to the ground

Posted on August 7, 2015 by SynCaine

Oh New Blizzard. After attempting “We are making the game like Vanilla again, come back!” with WoD, and failing to actually deliver, New Blizzard is back with “We are making the game like TBC, our one good expansion, come back!”, and, based on the feature list, have failed again.

Likely the only good that will come out of Legion is it further reinforces that TBC was the last time WoW was growing because it was still a solidly designed MMO, and I’m one of those crazy people who believes that the quality of your design has an effect on how successful something is. New Blizzard is, in a somewhat ironic way, trying to copy/paste Old Blizzard now. Unfortunately New Blizzard isn’t as good at the copy/paste game (see WoD vs Vanilla design), so isn’t getting the expected results.

Another problem going forward for New Blizzard is people aren’t going to be fooled again. WoD provided a large spike because people want WoW to be vanilla/TBC WoW, and bought into Blizzard being capable of return the game to that level of quality. A lot of people experienced that Blizzard isn’t capable of that today, and won’t believe Blizzard saying it this time around.

Additionally, past mistakes like the initial release of Diablo 3 with it’s RMT AH, subpar games like Hearthstone, and abortions like HotS have all worn away at the Blizzard name. They aren’t a sure-hit studio anymore, and fewer and fewer people will blindly buy the next Blizzard offering just because its a Blizzard game. What Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo built, these new release have torn down.

There will of course be some spike in numbers when Legion releases, because for all its long-term faults, enough people do still enjoy the first month of new WoW leveling content, and even at increased expansion prices, still see that month as a worthwhile buy. But between now and launch, subs will continue to erode away due to bad design and the fact that FFXIV is doing to WoW what WoW did to EQ2; just being a similar but outright better game (though for all its faults, WoW today isn’t nearly the disaster that EQ2 was, so at least the fight is a bit harder). How far those sub numbers fall will be interesting, as will seeing how much smaller the Legion pop will be compared to WoD.

I also think another major factor will be when Square-Enix announces it now has the largest sub MMO out, because that announcement will be seen as big news and draw the curiosity of the ultra-casual WoW player who doesn’t follow gaming news as closely as a lot of us do. MMO population momentum can turn quickly, and if suddenly guilds in WoW are getting empty, with everyone going to that FF MMO they keep hearing about from their friends/guildies, that snowball is hard to stop.

For me the most interesting item to watch is not when WoW is dethroned, or how quickly it falls overall, because those items are now inevitable, but the larger picture of when will Blizzard stop being considered a major studio? Right now their pipeline looks terrible (HS, HotS, and the only upcoming new title is Overwatch, which I think most of us know will be DoA), and they can’t live off older IP glory like Diablo and StarCraft for long. Can’t say I’ll shed too many tears over seeing the studio that nearly destroyed the MMO genre finally burning down.

Posted in Final Fantasy XIV, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 15 Comments

I just fixed WoW, you’re welcome Blizzard

Posted on August 6, 2015 by SynCaine

As I wrote over at TAGN, what the next expansion should be, but won’t because this is New Blizzard, is an expansion of garrisons, with Blizzard taking one of the current most successful games (Clash of Clans) and doing what Blizzard did best; copy/paste + apply Blizzard coat of paint.

Garrisons should be expanded to be used in the same way a base is used in CoC. You set up its layout to defend, and your followers become your troops that attack. Via questing, crafting, raiding, and battlegrounds, you can collect resources to upgrade both your defenses and followers, and your overall garrison has an ‘iLvl’ like your character.

You would initiate a search for a base to attack, be able to skip to another until you find one you want to hit, and then the attack would play out much like it does in CoC; you can’t directly control your followers but they have different AI with different focuses (some target defenses, others resources, etc). Since WoW is focused around a character, you can also use your character in the fight as a kind of super-minion, with customizable AI.

Add in a ranked mode, along with guild vs guild wars, and you have something that ties a lot of the existing WoW content into this new ‘end-game’ feature, allows you easy expansion (more defenses, more followers, more skins for garrisons/followers) without having to create new zones, more character levels, or dungeons/raids that would go stale once someone has the items they want.

But knowing New Blizzard, the expansion will just be more orcs or something equally dumb.

Posted in Clash of Clans, World of Warcraft | 2 Comments

New Blizzard investor call ‘highlights’

Posted on August 5, 2015 by SynCaine

Items that jumped out at me from the Activision Blizzard investor call:

“Destiny now has over 20 million registered players, with an average of about 100 hours of game play each”

First, the statement that the average gameplay length from 20 million people is 100 hours is pretty incredible. It would be interesting to see the number of people who didn’t like the game (under 5 hours let’s say) and the number who fiend on it (1000+ hours or so), but either way that 100 hour average is impressive.

Also it caught my eye that they call users ‘registered players’, because that can be dismissed as ‘registered account’ in the F2P world, but you can’t register in Destiny without buying the game, so those ‘registered players’ are in fact paying customers. First FFXIV, and now Destiny, is ‘registered players’ some legal-driven term or what?

On to Blizzard.

“In Q2, the average MAU across Blizzard games was up more than 50% year over year, achieving its highest level ever.”

It’s almost as if allowing people to create free accounts, and allowing the same person to create multiple free accounts on different devices, results in more accounts than ever. Go figure, and a really strong number to LEAD OFF with.

Bet he gets into the real numbers shortly…

“Engagement for Hearthstone, which was already very strong, nearly doubled year over year in terms of active players and time spent.”

Is this a “how many free accounts do you have now?” or an earnings call?

“This year alone, the community has already held more than 1,300 Fireside Gatherings globally.”

Oh. Well ok then. Nothing of real substance was provided about HS, and (I haven’t seen it myself yet) I guess they lump HS with Destiny in the actual numbers again?

The HoTS part had as much depth as the game itself. My guess is every analyst on the call at this point was making a wanking motion and praying for something of substance to be said.

Then D3 was talked about and, because that game is doing well in China, financial numbers were given. Funny how that works.

On to the Q&A.

First question was about Hearthstone revenue. The answer given?

“We saw almost double the amount of active players and times spent year over year, and an increase in more than 50% quarter over quarter. Revenue on the new platforms appear to be incremental to PC.”

So when asked about revenue, the first answer is to talk about free accounts still being played, and then tossing out that maybe, perhaps, it could be possible that mobile is helping revenue along with PC sales. Solid answer Mike, really solid. Quick follow-up question though, how much of a factor is a title barely in the top 20 for revenue in the app store on iPhone (can’t find it on the iPad, fingers got too tired)? Is that a rounding error or a blip? Just wondering…

Skipping down to the HotS question:

“I was hoping you could discuss where you are with the players, and more specifically, the paying players for Heroes of the Storm”

Part of the answer, the rest was wank-motion nothingness:

“I think if you look at other games in the genre, they all had more gradual growth of their player base, so that is what we would expect to see with Heroes of the Storm.”

Translation: HotS numbers are in the toilet, but hopefully they turn around, because hey MOBAs need time to grow? I mean sure, LoL didn’t start with tens of millions, nor did DOTA2, but neither of those games are kiddie-pool shallow, nor did either of those games come with other major product tie-ins or as massive a marketing push as HotS. You weren’t watching LoL or DOTA2 commercials on TV when those games launched, were you now? Did you get a free mount or whatever in WoW when you signed up for LoL/DoTA2? But yea no, HotS is totally going to be saved by its eSport performance. That’s totally going to work out, hopefully as well as it did for Hearthstone last year, right?

New Blizzard just doing its thing yet again, good job all around everyone. Is there another China you could launch D3 in next quarter?

Posted in Diablo 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Random, RMT, World of Warcraft | 21 Comments

ARK Survival Evolve quick thoughts

Posted on August 3, 2015 by SynCaine

I picked up ARK Survival Evolved because a few people have bugged me to get it, and also because it was on a small Steam sale. I’ve only spend a few hours with it, and currently all of my characters are bugged, stuck in some kind of permanent spectator mode where I can’t do anything, including dying or creating a new character. Have an email into support, hopefully will hear back ‘soon’.

Anyway, assuming that issue does get resolved, here are some quick thoughts on ARK. For starters, its a Unity engine game, and feels like it. While Unity has been used to make a million games, the style used in ARK is the same used in Rust and many other games, and while the theme and details of these games are all different, the just feel like the same game. If you told me ARK was a fan mod for Rust, I’d believe you.

That said, it would still be a pretty cool mod. Lets be honest, dinosaurs are cool, as is the idea of taming them and using them in combat, or fighting them when they attack you in the wild. Put that together with the usual ‘gather resources, build a base, go blow up other people’ gameplay with these type of games, and ARK is interesting for sure.

ARK also has a good character progression model, where every level you not only pick a stat to increase, but get some points to spend on unlocking new crafting blueprints. You can also find blueprints, but it’s nice that as you play more, you character is able to craft more, and also gets a bit stronger.

The downside of ARK is if you played Rust or games like it to death recently, not enough is new to get you hyped IMO. Like I said, the main object of the game is still the same, just with dinos and other details changed up. Plus from a software maturity perspective, Rust is much further along, so if dinos aren’t a make-or-break for you, I’m not sure why you would go with ARK over Rust, or start up ARK if you are already playing Rust.

Posted in Random, Steam Stuff | 5 Comments

HS: What’s the problem again?

Posted on July 28, 2015 by SynCaine

So rumor has it tournament Hearthstone games are being decided by a coin flip.

What a minute…

What HS game isn’t decided by a coin flip?

Posted in Random | 41 Comments

Time Warp – Fallout: New Vegas

Posted on July 28, 2015 by SynCaine

Time Warp hits post #2, making it the most successful ‘theme’ since Friday Blog Wars (oh how I miss you FBW) here at syncaine.com. This time let’s talk about Fallout: New Vegas.

Brief random history first: I never purchased NV when it first came out, even though I loved Fallout 3. I don’t remember exactly why, but I think part of it was I thought NV was a stand-alone expansion rather than a full game, and for whatever reason I had this idea that Vegas would be a really crappy, really cheesy setting for Fallout. I also don’t remember when I eventually did buy it (some Steam sale maybe?), but it was the original version, not the ultimate with all the DLC. The Ultimate I just bought a few days ago. Weird stuff all around.

Anyway, F:NV is a good game, you should play it. Done, thanks for reading.

Kidding. Please keep reading.

After finishing a mostly full playthrough of Fallout 3 recently, including loading up a lot of mods, I figured I’d do something similar with NV. Much to my surprise, I think NV has better mod support than F3. Maybe NV came with better mod tools? Or modders simply prefer it over F3? Either way, NV goes from good to still freaking great with mods. For starters, load up a bunch of the graphic enhancer ones, which will give you great textures for everything. Add some lighting stuff, character overhauls, weather effects, and NV can be made to look as good as something released in 2015.

Next grab some content mods. Right now I’m loving the “New Bison Steve Hotel and Lucky Casino”, which allows you to restore the casino located in Primm through a series of quests. The voice acting is pretty solid, the quest chain sends you all over, and the evolution of the casino space is very cool to see. I’m near the end, but haven’t finished yet to see the final payoff of the casino coming back to life.

The one companion mod I’m currently using is Willow, which so far has really impressed me. For starters, Willow comes with her own full set of gear, a unique look, and a very long quest chain to get to know her. Her voice work is also very solid, and seeing her interact with other companions is great. However the most impressive part is how Willow comments on the standard quests in the base game, including the main chain. She does and says more than the base companions in the game, and really enhancing a playthrough.

I’m looking forward to trying out some of the other major content mods, but right now the above are keeping me plenty entertained.

To briefly touch on an old topic, I do think F:NV is the better game overall compared to F3, just in that it feels more tied together. F3 is a more open sandbox (it would be nice if NV didn’t box you in so much at the very start), and has some great stuff, but NV feels like one area, with everyone aware of what is happening and caring about it (mostly the NCR vs Legion stuff, but also the general “we are in/around Vegas” thing).

My ‘gamer plan’ is to finish NV prior to the release of Blood Bowl 2, then take a good break with that game, and be nice and ready for Fallout 4 in Nov, while still having the events and general feel of F3 and NV fresh in my mind.

Posted in Fallout 3, Time Warp | 1 Comment