DF:UW – Sacrificing the game at the altar of false choice

Posted on May 13, 2014 by SynCaine

I’ve hinted at this before, but now AV has made their plans for revamping the ‘class’ system in DF:UW public, and rather than post this to the limited audience of Forumfall, I’d rather it get more exposure here on this blog.

The change is a classic example of sacrificing some real choice to create more false choice due to the illusion of freedom. If you have played a few MMOs, I’m guessing you know where this is going.

It’s important to understand what is first being sacrificed by this change. Currently all four roles (Warrior, Skirmisher, Primalist, Elementalist) are seen in-game. Additional, almost all schools (sub-roles) and all abilities are used. There are a few exceptions, but easily 90% of all roles/schools/skills are used and are viable. No system is perfect in terms of balance, but based purely on variety and usage, what DF:UW currently has is very solid.

I’ll use one of the roles (Skirm Deadeye main) I currently play as an example. To farm certain monsters that are best killed at range, this role works very well. I also use that identical setup for PvP. The range allows me to stay alive longer than a Warrior, and the ult (Salvo) is a very useful AoE ability for large-scale combat.

After this update goes live, this will no longer be the case. For PvE I’ll be wearing light armor (+dmg) because for PvE where the failure state is simply a time delay, time-to-kill is king, and +dmg is what best increases that (even if the attack speed bonus is better, durability loss per attack would still make this choice inferior). I’ll also replace more PvP-oriented skills with skills that either make PvE easier directly (self-heal, stat regen, etc), or increase my chances of escaping PvP (movement abilities, more on those specifically later).

For PvP, I’ll have yet another build, replacing abilities that work best in PvE with PvP-based ones (most likely AoEs for damage, and filling the rest with escape/utility).

If you believe the system increased choice, you are missing the boat. Sticking with the above example, I still have one choice for PvP, and one choice for PvE, but post-patch those are two different things, and in a world PvP MMO like DF:UW, that’s not a plus.

When everyone is out in the world farming with PvE-specific builds, attacking people at a mob spawn isn’t going to be much fun. Either you smash them due to running a PvP build against someone with a PvE build, or they escape because their PvE build includes enough of those abilities to make it possible. For a clear preview, see EVE PvP when you jump a mission runner in low-sec. At least today in DF:UW when a fight breaks out, just based on builds the field is more level, not a fight decided by the fact that one guy has a warp scram and the other is only cap-stable vs NPCs.

Moving to a higher level, there is basically zero chance that post-patch 90% of all abilities are viable. That means more skills go unused, which wastes their art, their animation, and the diversity they bring to the battlefield. So while technically the game will have more possible skill combinations on paper, in-game you won’t see nearly as many skills used, and most likely, you also won’t see as many viable skill combinations used. Would I be shocked if there is basically one flavor-of-the-month build for PvP? Hell no. And that build won’t be some fun ‘Paladin’ build or whatever. It’s going to be a tank-mage that chucks AoEs, heals, and exploits movement abilities. If you love playing an AoE-chucking tankmage ala most of DF1’s prime, congrats, DF:UW is going back to that. If you enjoy the current real options and diversity seen in-game? You’re outta luck. Viable options have been replaced with false choice, sorry.

Some other points.

PvE is going to be trivialized with this change even more, as player power is going up while mob difficulty will remaining the same. Worse-case, there is one FOTM PvE build that is broken-level powerful. As with the PvP aspect, hope you enjoy that playstyle, because if not welcome to gimp-ville.

Movement abilities are either going to be grossly nerfed across the board, or make unwanted PvP impossible. To go back to EVE, imagine roaming around looking for PvP if every ship was immune to warp scram and that’s going to be post-patch DF:UW with movement abilities. Going out to dig up some treasure chests? Your ‘class’ is now one where you stack movement and escape skills to reduce the risk of map running to zero. Scouts? Same thing, zero risk build ahoy. Worst case, post-patch the game becomes an arms race of who stacks more movement abilities or exploits them best. That would actually make me miss the bunnyhopping idiocy of DF1.

This change will have massive economic impacts. Some people are going to be royally screwed and will be very upset about it. I don’t want to fully dive into this now, but again if you have played an MMO or two I’m sure you know where this is going.

This change also dramatically increases how much prowess (XP) you must earn before you become PvP viable, which hurts new players most. Currently that point is around 40-60k, but post-patch it will be much higher. Having 100 in all four stats will be far more important, as will having access to all boosters. You will also need to max more skills, especially if the expected PvE and PvP builds vary so much.

Additionally to a longer grind to viable, the system as described is also more complex and arcane. How intuitive is assigning your Wisdom stat to a Greatsword to get access to better Greatswords? Oh and then assign your strength stat to cloth armor so your swing with the greatsword hit for more damage. What sense, even in a world where people throw fireballs, is there in leather armor allowing you to cast spells faster than other armors, including the wizard-looking cloth armor?

So yea, I’m not really looking forward to this. In fact, it’s basically taken most of my motivation to play away. It’s just hard to keep building in something that you know is going to fall off a cliff, and off a cliff is exactly what this update is. Sad really, especially given the big steps forward AV took with DF:UW from DF1, and even with more recent patches.

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, MMO design | 9 Comments

EVE: Player control vs game restrictions

Posted on May 12, 2014 by SynCaine

Quick follow up to yesterday’s post.

First, getting over the social hurdle in EVE (getting into a Corp) is not harder than in other MMOs. A new character won’t get into a top-tier raiding guild, just like a new pilot won’t get into a top-tier EVE Corp. There are mass-recruit guilds in other MMOs, and there is EVE Uni, RvB, and Brave Newbies in EVE. And I’d argue the EVE Corp’s are far better than your average mass-recruit guild in other MMOs in terms of helping players and teaching the basics.

Do Corp’s do spy checks? Absolutely, just like games with clan banks don’t give everyone instant and full access. The degree and style is deeper/different in EVE because EVE is simply deeper and different than your average MMO. You don’t have an API in your average MMO like you do in EVE. You don’t generally have guilds with hundreds of thousands of man-hours of effort built up that can be ruined by a spy. Hell, in most MMOs you don’t even have guilds that have been around to build up hundreds of thousands of hours of effort to be ruined, even if it was possible.

Second, getting yourself into a Corp that makes the game better isn’t luck. If you just drift around running missions till you get bored, waiting for a great Corp to find you, you are doing it wrong. Like in basically any social situation in an MMO, the more you put in the more you will get out. If you do some legwork to find a quality Corp, and then put in the effort to impress and get in, you will be accepted 99% of the time, and will get 99% more out of EVE for doing so.

The critical difference between the EVE hurdle of being social and the average MMO hurdle of 100s of hours of gameplay/grind before you see ‘end-game’ is that in EVE, you are in control of how long this takes. If you want to drift around in high-sec, or join whatever random Corp and derp around, that’s on you. If you really do want to jump into the deep-end, and are prepared to put the effort in, EVE gameplay mechanics allow it. In contrast, no matter how motivated I am in the first 10 hours of WoW, I can’t get into the latest tier of raiding.

EVE puts the control in your hands, most other MMOs keep you in a pre-defined path until the game says you are ready.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design | 15 Comments

EVE: Day one lessons not learned for 11 years

Posted on May 9, 2014 by SynCaine

There are easily dozens of “How to make an MMO” design lessons in this combat report from TAGN, but clearly the biggest one is that in EVE, a new player is able to not only see advanced content, but meaningfully contribute to it. It has been stated many times, but if you actually break it down, it’s rather remarkable how unique that is to EVE, and what a black mark it is on other MMOs that something similar can’t happen.

Let’s start with some basic stuff. The biggest hurdle the new player got over prior to this was the social one; he was already in a major group that not only accepted him, but also is smart enough to understand that new players are very important and showing them what the game is all about is critical for the Corp’s (and by extension, the game’s) growth. The mechanics of the game make it easier for the Corp to have such a program, and to allow newer players to jump in, but without that initial social connection the new player won’t be about to jump in and see such content so quickly.

EVE does a good job here because the mechanics don’t punish the new player OR the group he joins when they bring him along. In fact, ‘bring him along’ is actually understating the situation, because he isn’t just allowed to come along and view what is happening, he is able to meaningfully contribute. That isn’t the case if the group was raiding, doing set-number PvP, or any content that scales for the number of players. Think about your current MMO; how many of the above pitfalls does it feature?

The true beauty of EVE is that while it allows that new player to jump right in, it ALSO highly motivates him to also keep ‘growing’. He is in a tackle ship on day one, but he saw battleships that are still months away in terms of training and needing the ISK to buy one. Even further out, he saw a Titan, which realistically he is likely YEARS away from flying. The real key however is that while he sees the carrot, and the carrot in some cases is VERY far away, the game doesn’t make him feel useless or a burden until he has progressed. Again, look at the MMO you are playing today, and consider how many barriers the game has placed in front of a new player prior to them reaching any kind of ‘end-game’ content. How much of its other content is FORCED onto a player before giving them access to something else.

What continues to blow my mind about the MMO genre, in a very depressing way, is that the blueprint that is EVE has been around now for 11 successful years. It might be rocket science (see what I did there?), but CCP has done the heavy lifting for the industry. Is everyone else so truly inept that not only can they not figure out what CCP has figured out, but they can’t even copy/paste it well-enough to produce something remotely close to EVE?

#EVE #MMOdesign

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design | 22 Comments

Clash of Clans – Clan Wars make you care

Posted on May 7, 2014 by SynCaine

Quick update on Clash of Clans, which I’m still really enjoying.

Clan Wars were recently added, and so far they have been great. They take the core gameplay of attacking another player’s village with your troops, and add more weight to the result by tying it into a clan war score. This makes every attack feel more important, and really makes you think about not just how to get the most resources, but how you can hopefully level the entire village in the time limit of the attack.

You also only get two attacks per war, so again this really makes you stop and consider your attack, and if you fail or don’t score as highly as you expected, it kinda stings. Especially because everyone in the clan can see how each attack went, and even view a replay of each battle. In top-ranked clans I’m sure this is used as a way to remove poorly performing members, and honestly it’s a pretty fair approach.

What still surprises me about the game is how little it pushes you to spend money. No ‘sale’ spam. No in-game pop-ups. You do see the gem (paid currency) cost to speed everything up, but since you get a decent amount of gems just from playing, even that is IMO more a convenience in terms of the UI than the usual F2P in-your-face taunting. And perhaps most importantly, speeding stuff up isn’t that important or truly beneficial in the long run, so again you really don’t feel force.

And yet the game is making a ton of money, which honestly I’m happy about. The more F2P titles that succeed using this model (like LoL), and the more titles that fail using the normal, obnoxious F2P model (most MMOs), the better.

#ClashofClans

Posted in iPhone | 2 Comments

ESO: Turn right, always turn right

Posted on May 5, 2014 by SynCaine

This image, showing just how often ESO uses the same layout for dungeons, is a great illustration of why what worked well in Skyrim doesn’t work as well in ESO.

It’s almost part of the IP that you reuse stuff in Elder Scrolls. It was done in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and as we see, now in ESO. The critical difference is that in the single-player, sandboxy games, you have options. In ESO, you progress from one zone to another, without choice. And even within a zone, there is a somewhat linear path that you ‘should’ follow. Because :themepark:

To put it a different way, imagine if Skyrim forced you to do a dozen “kill the bandit leader” quests before you could advance the main plot and get to experience some of the better quest, and during those dozen required quests, the game sends you to a dozen specific caves that all look and feel very similar. That’s ESO at its worst. You COULD do exactly that in Skyrim, but you can also completely skip all of that stuff and JUST do the unique stuff. The option to do either, or to jump between the two, is the key.

General themepark design means you don’t have that choice. And why is it that way? Because the devs are worried you will get lost, that you won’t be properly guided. And I can’t even say they are 100% wrong; how many threads have we seen about a sandbox where someone ‘had nothing to do’? A themepark is like going bowling and every lane has the bumpers up. I’d hate it, but sadly more than enough ‘gamers’ will be happy about getting a higher score and not concern themselves with the fact that failure was never even an option.

#ESO

Posted in The Elder Scrolls Online | 12 Comments

Eador: True multiplayer has finally arrived!

Posted on May 1, 2014 by SynCaine

Almost a year ago I wrote about Eador: Masters of the Broken World, praising the game overall but noting the lack of full multiplayer. Well a year later that critical option has finally been added, and I’m pretty excited to give it a go with a buddy.

Baring the whole thing falling on its face due to technical issues, I think it’s pretty cool and praise-worthy that a developer would make such a significant addition to a game, for free, so long after release. If you haven’t picked the game up yet, and enjoy deep turn-based fantasy strategy titles, this is a game you should absolutely own.

#Eador

Posted in Eador | 7 Comments

DF:UW – Fear and fun in Agon

Posted on April 30, 2014 by SynCaine

Following the development of Darkfall is far more stressful than actually playing it for me. I have issues, most likely stemming from having more than one MMO I enjoyed crapped on by the developers. Whether it was Tammel in UO, ToA in DoAC, ‘accessibility’ in WoW, or 1.2 in Rift, I’ve played too many MMOs that started good/great and turned into something I no longer liked. I have that fear, constantly, with DF:UW, mostly because of the idiocy cesspool that is Forumfall and AV’s past history of making decisions based off that noise. Again, issues.

That fear is subsiding however. Lately AV has been hitting it out of the park. They have acted decisively to try to fix the economy, ignoring the loud nonsense coming from Forumfall, and that area of the game has seen improvement. They stopped adding one-off content and have started delivering stuff that is sustainable and either improves the core game (AoI, levy) or adds additional layers to it (armor dyes, daily/weekly feats). The upcoming combat changes, something I once feared would bring back the core flaws of DF1 (everyone playing the FOTM), look on paper as a solid, logical step forward for character options while being mindful of past mistakes and pitfalls.

They are also communicating on the forums more, which is at times overrated (I’d rather they act more than talk more, ultimately), but when combined with solid patches that hit deadlines, it works and helps calm some of the lunatics down.

More important than increased communication, they are interacting more with the game and the players, from the very successful 1v1 tournament they recently ran, to the upcoming free weekend and rumored GM events, the ‘new’ AV seems to actually get it and care. It hasn’t really felt like that since the first two years of DF1. Even the soon-to-start mentor system is well thought out and should really help the game retain new players.

For me personally I’m really enjoying the game right now, and having as much fun with it as I’ve ever had. PvP with Last Call (my clan) is very enjoyable win or lose, we PvE in groups and as a clan nightly, and every patch of late has given us new stuff to do or new features that improve the game for us. Good times.

Edit: DF:UW one year anniversary news post + video.

Second Edit: Buddy keys have also been added. If you would like one, contact me via email (top right corner, front page).

#DF:UW

Posted in Darkfall Online, MMO design | 9 Comments

AcheAge: Getting through the themepark to get to the sandbox

Posted on April 28, 2014 by SynCaine

Keen’s ArcheAge post today reiterates one of the ‘core values’ I think any virtual world must have; at no point should I be ‘done’ with an area. I think the whole concept of moving through zones is distinctively ‘not virtual world’ (saying its themepark might be accurate, though perhaps too limiting), and it also just bothers me on a number of levels.

First, anytime you have a setup where you progress through things, you inherit the problem of player separation and motivation. Once you ‘finish’ an area, returning to help someone else out is a pain or at best a waste.

Adding to the above, anytime you ‘finish’ content you are done with it, and now need the devs to make more. Regardless of the size of the development team, ultimately that’s not sustainable, and if the overall goal is to keep playing an MMO ‘forever’, that’s not going to work out.

What’s really interesting about the genre right now is newer games are mixing concepts together from previous titles. What puts me off heavily from ArcheAge is that while it has some ‘sandbox features’, that 1-50 linear zone setup is a killer for me.

#ArcheAge

Posted in ArcheAge, MMO design | 30 Comments

EVE: I’m going to put this next to my “History of WoW Empires” book

Posted on April 25, 2014 by SynCaine

Via TAGN, Kickstater (already funded) for a history of EVE Empires book. Easiest $25 I’ve spent in a while.

 

#EVE

Posted in EVE Online, Mass Media | 2 Comments

ESO: State of the game, state of the MMO

Posted on April 23, 2014 by SynCaine

Since Bethesda releases a State of the Game today, I might as well post mine now as well.

Overall I really like the game. I don’t know if I’d call it a great MMO, but as just a game overall I’m really enjoying it. I’m progressing slower than expected (lvl 21 right now), but don’t feel that need to catch up or hit the end-game.

Gold spam has been noticeable, and it’s disappointing that Bethesda seems so unprepared for it and that it’s now taking so much of their focus to fix. It’s 2014 guys, and you expected to launch a highly populated MMO, really no excuse here.

On a similar note, I had posted that the first few days of launch where the best MMO launch I’ve experienced. Well the first month hasn’t been. Some quests have been broken, the bots at public dungeon bosses is HORRIBLE in terms of immersion and just general game enjoyment, and stuff like unusually long loading screens and chat lag all result in a game that is not nearly as smooth and easy to enjoy as it was on day one of the early start.

The MMO parts? Pretty hit or miss here.

The 4 man dungeons so far have all been fun, and what limited time I’ve spent with PvP has shown glimpses of something much better than the mess that was GW2 PvP. I like my character, I look forward to trying other specs, and I think overall the crafting has been above-average themepark crafting.

On the other hand questing really is best done solo, to the point that having others around you is more annoying than anything else. On top of that, you basically have to go out of your way to do non-dungeon stuff with your guildmates, which just feels wrong. I should be happy when a guildmate logs on, and I’m just not in ESO.

Even stuff like taking down the elite spawns on a map together feels forced, if only because one player is teleporting nearby to the other, and more than once said elite spawn has been killed by a random coming by and helping out while your guild mate is traveling. Plus once you kill the mob, the guild mate goes back to his solo questing while you go back to yours. (Note: This aspect is particularly striking to me right now because I’m also playing a lot of Darkfall, and in Darkfall having more people is almost always a good thing, and grouping up is so natural and beneficial.)

Ultimately it all returns me to the main driving of this blog since pretty much day one; a ‘sandbox’ is how MMOs work best, but for whatever reason it always (not EVE) seems that the sandbox is limited by its budget or design details, while a good themepark makes for a good game, but it ultimately held back by the fact that it’s a themepark. Why can’t someone other than CCP make a sandbox MMO that is also a solid game?

#ESO #DF:UW

Posted in Darkfall Online, The Elder Scrolls Online | 10 Comments