Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred

Diablo IV's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, launched a couple of weeks ago. Some thoughts:

Blizzard made the same...mistake is not quite the word I want...with the story of Vessel of Hatred as Square Enix did with Dawntrail. They both assume or take it for granted that the player likes the main NPC, Neyrelle in VoH and Wuk Lamat in Dawntrail, to much greater degree than is warranted. If the player doesn't like the NPC, then the story is actively annoying. At the end of the main campaign in base D4, Neyrelle does something quite stupid, and a lot of player base is out of charity with her because of that. So VoH insisting that the player is deeply concerned with Neyrelle rubs you the wrong way.

Also, in general, I think RPGs should refrain from forcing emotions on the player character. Gamers are notoriously contrary, and insisting that "No, your character feels X" is a surefire way to get their hackles up.

Otherwise, though, the story is quite good. It delves into Nahantu and Akarat, and I really liked the fleshing out of the Akarat mythology.

Gameplay-wise, I kind of wish the new Season hadn't started right away. I wanted to do the new campaign on my original Rogue which did the main campaign. But that character is an eternal character, and I wouldn't have made any seasonal progress. In the end, I basically made a carbon-copy of my Rogue and did the story in Seasonal. D3's rebirth feature would have been a nice compromise.

Apparently the new class, Spiritborn, is completely broken. One of the community sites rates builds in tiers, using S-A-B-C. They introduced a new "S+" tier, just for Spiritborn.

I'm playing a Flurry Rogue, and it's going pretty well. Blizzard has spread out the rewards nicely. Bouncing around and doing a bit of different content every play session works very nicely.

The way the new difficult tiers have settled with Torment levels is very nice as well. It's good that almost all content scales together. The only exception is the Pit, which is all about pushing higher difficulties.

All in all, Vessel of Hatred is a good expansion. The story is pretty good, and the rest of the game is in a good position. The only glaring issue is the power level of Spiritborn, and hopefully Blizzard will bring them back in line for the next season.

Thoughts on the Gilded Brutosaur

Last week, Blizzard added a new Auction House mount, the Gilded Brutosaur, to the Blizzard store for $90 USD. Naturally, it became a focal point of discussion in the WoW and MMO community.

First, some context. Back in Battle for Azeroth, you could buy the Mighty Caravan Brutosaur for 5 million gold. It was the only way to access the Auction House outside a major city. The mount was only available during the expansion, and was removed when the next expansion launched. The only way to currently obtain it is when it very rarely appears on the Black Market Auction House, where it regular sells for the "gold cap", or the maximum possible bid.

So this is the first time Blizzard is making an AH vendor available in several years.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The problem is that you cannot talk about expensive items, whether in in-game gold or real-world currency, without bringing in the WoW token. And the WoW token greatly muddies the issue.

As you may recall, the WoW token essentially allows you to to trade real-world currency for in-game gold. Let's say the exchange rate is 400,000 gold to $15 USD. At that rate, the new Brutosaur costs 2.4 million gold. And the old Brutosaur cost $187.50. Does that mean the new Brutosaur is actually half the cost of the old one?

A second important point is that the WoW token exchange rate is not fixed, but floating. 

Amusing graph of the WoW Token exchange rate when the new mount was released. From Reddit.

The floating rate means that only one price is fixed, the other is variable. Which currency is better to fix? If you fix the gold value, that means the USD side might range from, say, $60 to $120, depending on when the player tries to buy tokens. To me, that seems worse than letting in-game gold vary.

Building on the floating exchange point, the side which is fixed changes the exchange rate. If the gold side is fixed, that means the supply of tokens increases as players without gold buy tokens. The rate then falls, requiring players to buy even more tokens to purchase the item.

On the other hand, if the USD side is fixed, the demand for tokens increases, and the rate goes up. This means that players who do supply tokens get a better deal in terms of in-game gold.

If you look at the issue strictly from this point of view, I think it's clearly better for expensive items to be priced in USD. It's better for the USD price to be predictable. Once you're past a certain point, there's not a lot of use for in-game currency, so it matters less if it is variable. As well, the effect on the exchange rate is healthier for the game, and a better experience for those buying WoW tokens for real-world currency.

For those reasons, I think that we're not going to seen any more items which cost a million or more in-game gold. It's awkward, and looks unfortunate on social media, but super-expensive items just work better when they're on the store, priced in real-world currency.

The Trading Post

The one element of modern WoW which I don't understand is the Trading Post. I stopped playing before it was introduced in Dragonflight, so I've only interacted with it in the last two months.

The Trading Post basically seems to be a MTX in-game shop, only without the MTX. For the F2P games, an in-game shop is a necessity. But it's almost like Blizzard feels an in-game shop is an actual attraction, in and of itself. Which is madness.

Part of my confusion is that I've always seen art as the bottleneck in modern game creation. There's got to be a better use of artists than turning out models for the in-game shop for in-game currency. Like even add the art as rewards for a simple quest chain, or extra rewards in the regular content.

Some people might say that the Trading Post art doesn't "fit" the current content, and that's true. But generally artists in corporations don't choose what to work on. They can pitch various ideas, but the business picks what it feels should be made. If the business wants art that fits the current content, that's what will be made.

I also don't see the Trading Post as a driver of engagement. At least for me, I tend to hit the Trading Post goals as a byproduct of engaging with the regular content. The Great Vault drives engagement, not the Trading Post. This is unlike a system like Galactic Seasons in SWTOR, where you would look to see what the season goals were, and that would inform what content you did.

The other thing that annoys me is the incessant in-game advertising for the Trading Post. Again, this is a necessary evil for F2P games, but it does make those games worse. As far as I can tell, WoW is deliberately inflicting this advertising on the players for no positive reason, just pure "enshittification".

I guess maybe the Trading Post is a hedge against the day WoW goes F2P, either overall or in a specific reason. But it feels like a terrible waste to me with the current game. The resources put into the Trading Post could be redirected to making the actual game better.

Raiding Plans, Ner'ubar Palace

I've been enjoying The War Within so far. There's a nice mix of weekly activities in each of the different zones.

I've also joined a potential raid group from another guild we raid with. My guild is basically in a three-guild community with one main raid, and now a second raid. I've joined the second raid, who are pretty casual, but we did the time walking Black Temple. It was pretty fun. I also got [Ashes of Al'ar] from the quest reward! The second night we did Mythic dungeons. We did a couple of +2s, missing the timer by a little bit on each. Next week we're supposed to start raiding Ner'ubar Palace.

I actually went on a Normal Ner'ubar Palace alt raid with guild community. It's a pretty interesting dungeon with some good fights. The council fight is a little difficult, possible a little too much damage for our item level. One interesting thing is that it has a couple mechanics which I associate with FFXIV, mainly the zone getting divided up and having to move into a section where the mechanic just happened.

Queen Ansurek was a very interesting fight, with an emphasis on involuntary movement that I don't recall seeing before. There's a bomb, and the raid stands next to it. Ansurek sends out a circular wave of poison from her location. As the wave approaches the raid, someone triggers the bomb, and the blast knocks the raid over the wave and safely next to the boss. There's a couple other similar mechanics in the fight.

All in all, it was a good raid. It will be interesting to see on Heroic. I also got a Warbound Tier piece, which looks to be of Raid Finder item level. A pretty interesting drop, though it would have been more exciting if I actually had alts, let alone of the correct classes.

The only other interesting note from this past week is that you can do the dungeon weekly in a Follower dungeon. This makes it a very chill experience.

The War Within: Last Zone, Delves, Endgame

The last zone of the War Within is Azj-Kahet, the spider/Nerubian zone. This zone suffers a little bit from being unfinished story-wise, as the zone's story continues on over the expansion. I don't think it really grabbed me, either. It's good, maybe I was just a little tired at that point.

Otherwise, I've done most of the other content. I've ran the dungeons on Heroic. They're all pretty good. The Dawnbreaker one is interesting as Blizzard tried to incorporate flying mounts and an aboveground layout as the dungeon. Not sure it was entirely successful, but it was interesting. Personally, I disliked not being able to tell where the tank was going to decide to land in the second part. Also, I didn't really know what was going on and died chasing the last boss.

The follower dungeons are also quite good. I did a couple of The War Within to finish some quests, and also tried a levelling one from Dragonflight. The interesting thing is that the NPC tank moves at a pretty good clip, but also stops if you stop. Ironically if you don't know that, you chase the tank, the tank keeps going, which really feels like you're stuck in the modern "go, go, go" environment. But once I realized the tank would only run X meters ahead, and then would wait, it got a lot smoother.

The other major new content is Delves, which have been on a roller-coaster of bug-fixing and difficulty adjustments. I think Blizzard will sort everything out. I do feel like the community seems to take it for granted that they should be able to do Tier 8 even while under-geared. It's not the end of the world if people gear up in lower tiers.

The other thing which would be nice is if Brann had a tank spec. I wish they had used the Chromie tank mechanic from Legion. For reference, the tank loses 2% health every second until 50%, but damage scales significantly with health above 50%. I really enjoyed healing in those Chromie scenarios, and I think Delves would have been the perfect place to bring it back.

I also did the first wing on Raid Finder and even won a healer sword, which was nice. I might look into seeing if I can raid this expansion, though the main guild raid seems full for now.

The War With has quite a nice variety of endgame activities. Having all the activities give caches, but limiting rewards to the first 2 or first 4, is an excellent way to allow the player to pick and choose what they want to do.

Hero Talents in Future Expansions

Kaylriene has some thoughts on the future of Hero Talents:

The pros are that Hero Talents add fun customization that is a decent flavor without requiring relearning a spec and that they are powerful – the stated design intent is that they can and should be near 33% of your overall throughput, which is a very-potent 10 points to spend. The cons are that they just aren’t flavorful enough, they’re largely passive bonuses that take agency out of your hands, and oh yeah – it’s WoW and mathematically you have a top pick for every spec and every mode of play that’s already mathed out and written up on Wowhead guides, Icy Veins, and the class Discords. My longer-term wait-and-see con for them is that they also feel like a trap that is going to be designed around in just one expansion – by using this solution, Blizzard has functionally trapped themselves to either expanding the Hero Talent trees for a couple of expansions until they’re as big as the class and spec trees or pruning them down and making the big marquee rollout of them a bit of a waste, and neither of these is a particularly good outcome. I hope there’s a secret third option and that Blizzard has already identified this as a priority.

I was thinking about the future of Hero Talents in new expansions, and I do think there's a third path. Blizzard could completely replace the 3 current Hero archetypes with 3 new ones. So in The War Within, you're a Templar Retribution paladin. In the next expansion, you can be a Crusader Retribution paladin that focuses on an entirely new mechanic.

Then in a couple of expansions, maybe they can bring back popular and successful archetypes, mixed in with new ones.

That way it becomes an evergreen system, but bounded at the same time. Each spec only has access to two Hero archetypes, but the archetypes change from expansion to expansion. Each archetype focuses on a specific ability, the way they do now, but remains at 10 points, and you get 1 point per level in the new expansion. 

The core class and specialization remain consistent with the standard tweaks and tuning, while the changing Hero archetypes would provide the radical changes which people like to see.

The War Within: Hallowfall

This post may contain spoilers for The War Within.

Hallowfall may very well be the best zone ever created in World of Warcraft.

Now, I'm probably a little biased as a paladin player, but everything about the zone is just perfect. The Arathi are excellent. It's so nice to have a zone of basically Lawful Good people and have it be played straight, with none of "the good guys are really the bad guys" twists that have infected modern media. (Well, there is the Priory, but even that is more a case of the good guys getting desperate.)

The motif of fires and flames holding back the darkness, and Lamplighters who go into the darkness, works perfectly in this expansion. It also has surprising parallels with the kobolds and their use of candles to hold back the darkness. I'm waiting for the inevitable meeting of the kobolds and the Arathi, where the kobolds decide that the Sacred Flame is the biggest candle of them all, and become Lamplighters.

The questing plate armour is superb, perhaps the first armor that has surpassed Judgment in the eyes of the community. At least until the Judgement remaster was announced.

There are two very memorable side-quests. First, Alyza Bowblaze, who is quite likely to lead a crusade when she grows up. The second is The Last Mage, which is worth avoiding spoilers even in a spoiler-marked post.

Hallowfall is a superb zone, one of Warcraft's best. It manages to be a standout even in a very strong expansion.

The War Within: Second Zone

This post contains spoilers for The War Within.

I hit 80 while working on the second zone in The War Within, the Ringing Deeps. I guess the expansion is really balanced around only doing the main quests. And maybe doing the remainder on your "Warband"? Shades of FFXIV and doing side quests on other jobs.

In any case, the second zone was pretty decent. It continued the story of the Earthen from the first zone. One thing though, there's a plot line about how the Earthen can transform into some type of ghoul. This seemed to come out of nowhere for me. I was rather confused for much of this, as the quests seemed to take it for granted that we knew all about this and how it was a problem.

Actually, to be fair, it was really unclear whether: A) we knew that ghouls existed and didn't know where they came from; or B) we knew the ghouls came from Earthen. Maybe there was an introductory quest line in the first zone that got cut.

Otherwise, it was a good zone. Again, very Alliance-heavy with the focus on the Bronzebeards. I do wonder how primary-Horde players are finding this.

This is also the first zone in the expansion that is underground, and I do think Blizzard has done a good job here. It's clearly underground, but at the same time there's enough room to move about easily. The ecology also reinforces the feeling of being underground, with really interesting choices in flora and fauna.

The War Within: First Zone

This post may contain spoilers for first two zones of The War Within.

I picked up The War Within on Monday and have been slowly working through it. I decided to try to do as much of the first zone as I could before moving on. So I got to 76 before making my way to the second zone.

There was a minor kerfuffle as Blizzard nerfed levelling a day after launch, giving the people who purchased Early Access a lot more time with the quick levelling. While the optics were bad, it was really necessary. I went Templar on my Retribution Paladin, which gives you a very powerful new ability Hammer of Light, which chains off Wake of Ashes. I was having a really hard time trying out this new ability because Wake of Ashes would kill everything before I could even use Hammer of Light!

In any case, the first part in Dalaran is really well-done. There was this seamless cut from action to in-game cutscene that I don't think I've seen WoW do before. Xal'atath is a great villain so far, just toying with the good guys like a cat. Unlike the humourless Jailer, Xal'atath is having fun, and it just works. Style is everything for a villain.

The Isle of Dorn is a pretty good first zone. The earthen are interesting, though it is a bit weird that this is the second robot-ish race we've seen recently. The first being the mecha-gnomes. They are rather different, but it's still kind of weird.

It does feel like a very Alliance-centric expansion so far, though that may be mostly because of the dwarves.

Also, being called "Outlander" all the time reminds me a lot of The Old Republic.

The Infernal Hordes

The history of Diablo IV is Blizzard trying to make unique and interesting content, and the community yelling that the content needs to be more streamlined. That there's no point in making complicated dungeons, or making the players search for keys, etc. Then Blizzard gives in and smoothes out the rough edges.

And so in Season V, we come to the ultimate expression of this philosophy: The Infernal Hordes.

The Infernal Hordes is basically a large round room. Waves after waves of enemies spawn, and then you kill them and collect aether. After several waves, you go to a new room and fight a council of 3 bosses. Then you can spend your aether on rewards.

I fully expect the community to complain that you have to switch rooms for the boss fight.

On the other hand, the Infernal Hordes is pretty fun. There's also a mechanic after each wave where you can choose a boon/bane combo from a set of 3 options, which can change up how you approach future waves.

The Infernal Hordes is Diablo's combat in its rawest, purest form. Yet, Diablo's combat system is strong enough to make that compelling. But I guess the true test is staying power. Can the Infernal Hordes remain fun after a few weeks?

The War Within Early Access

Early Access for The War Within has started. This time around, Blizzard did something new. Normally, early access is tied to preorders. This time around, early access is tied to the most expensive preorder tier, and not available for the lower tiers.

I don't know if you can really fault Blizzard for this. Early access is often felt to be the most valuable perk of preordering, so they probably sold a lot more of the higher tier preorders than before. And of course, probably spread the load on the servers out.

But I think it's left a bit of sour taste in the mouths of the player base. Blizzard is coming off two big successes in Dragonflight and the Pandaria Remix. I think splitting the current player base this way has dampened the enthusiasm.

Maybe it's just a vibes thing, but it just doesn't feel like a real early access in the community. Looking at Reddit right now, three of the four top posts are about the split.[1] It's not even angry posts, it's more a sense of resignation. But it really should be a sense of excitement. Kind of honestly, I'd even take the traditional "6 hour queue" and "servers on fire" posts.

Oh well, it will probably be forgotten in a few days. I actually haven't preordered, so I'll probably get the expansion after it formally launches sometime. Still, I can't help but feel that Blizzard tripped and squandered some of the momentum from Dragonflight.

[1] The fourth post is about Warbands, and how the poster has so many alts, he should have a Warchestra instead. Honestly, it deserves its spot.

Alleria: Light and Shadow

The second short for The War Within is Alleria: Light and Shadow.

I gather this is a condensed version of a longer audiobook. The artstyle is nice.

Also, I kept thinking that Alleria should have become a Demon Hunter. She's an elf, and she has all the same lines. She even uses her bow as a glaive-style weapon. 

Heh, maybe this is hinting at a third specialization for Demon Hunters: Void. Demon Hunters that are void themed instead of Fel and fire themed.

After all, they gave Evokers a third spec, so maybe Blizzard will do the same for Demon Hunters.

Threads of Destiny

WoW is doing short trailers for the new expansion. Here's the first one, Threads of Destiny.

It's a pretty interesting introduction to one of the antagonist factions in the expansion. It also features everyone's favourite dagger, Xal'atath, doing traditional corruptive villain things.

One thing I particularly liked about the cinematic is that Xal'atath set things up so she wins both ways. The queen accepts, the princess supports the queen, Xal wins. The queen declines, the princess dethrones the queen, Xal wins.

If The War Within is just one crazy Xanatos Gambit from Xal'atath, I'll be pretty happy.

Dragonflight Catch-Up: Patch 10.1

I've been going through the Dragonflight story quests for each patch. Since WoW throws all the quests at you once you hit max level, it's very easy to do them out of order. I've been following this guide on Reddit.

So far, I've done the 10.1 quests, which focused mainly on the Black and Blue dragonflights. I quite liked both of them. For the Black dragonflight, I liked the triad of Ebyssian, Sabellian, and Wrathion. I thought their story was well done. It's pretty rare for WoW to focus on the flaws of the heroes in this fashion, and it was a nice change of pace. Compare it to the Blue dragons, where all the dragons had quirks, but no real flaws as such (well, maybe Azuregos).

The Blue dragonflight were also good, but very different in tone. I liked that Blizzard used the old world and history, taking players back to previously-visited locations.

All in all, the 10.1 quests were quite good and interesting. I'm looking forward to the next set of quests, which look to be focused on the Bronze and Green flights.

Radiant Echos

The WoW pre-patch event, Radiant Echos, is currently active. I caved during the free weekend and downloaded WoW again. I haven't played since launch.

First thing I noticed is that the UI feels slightly off. They didn't do a full overall, but Blizzard changed enough icons such that it's a bit unfamiliar. I still haven't figured out what the hourglass next to people's names in guild chat means.

The event itself is pretty fun. You go to three zones, do events based on quests and bosses from previous expansions, and then kill the memory of a major boss like Arthas. Then the cycle repeats, though the bulk of the reward comes from killing the boss once. It's a pretty good rhythm, and the quests are fun callbacks. There's also a nice variety of quest types. Sometimes it's killing a named character, sometimes it's collecting pages from Stranglethorn, and sometimes it's trying to get the perfect boar liver to drop.

I gather the original incarnation was much stricter. The event didn't repeat and only did one cycle, so it was easy to miss the boss kill. Also, I think the time between events was longer. Blizzard has tweaked it so that you can keep going consistently, and also have several chances to get the boss kill.

There's also a quest line, though I don't think it is complete. I imagine the second half will activate closer to the expansion launch.

Heuristics for Building a Diablo IV Character

Diablo IV's next season is coming up, so I thought I'd lay out some heuristics and strategies for getting a semi-decent build. Now, none of these will compare to a true pre-made build from the various websites, but I think they're a good skeleton for a player to experiment with.

1. Diablo IV is built around builder-spender gameplay. Generally only take 1 builder and 1 spender.
2. One of your abilities (usually the spender) will be your main source of damage. Only put multiple ranks into this ability. Just take 1 rank of the other abilities you want to use. Other than your main ability, focus on passives.
3. The legendary aspects you put on your gear are your "set". The priority for the early game is figuring what your "set" looks like and assembling the necessary aspects. After that, just keep imprinting your set on new gear.
4. Put your best aspect on a 2H weapon (2x effective) if you are using one, otherwise on your amulet (1.5x effect). 
5. While levelling, temper your gear with the basic stats. The more exotic stats generally need a full build to take advantage of.
6. As for gear, just upgrade whenever you can. You can worry about specific stats once you hit Ancestral gear.
7. Unique items are powerful, but don't use too many. Much of your power comes from your "set" of legendary aspects, and each unique you use causes you to lose one of your set pieces.
8. What sort of abilities and special effects you focus on depend mostly on your build (i.e. crowd control, burning, overpower, etc.). But you need an easy, regular source of Vulnerable, be it ability, aspect, paragon glyph, etc. You should have it by the time you hit Tier IV.
9. For the paragon board, your first priority is glyph sockets, and enough ability points to activate the secondary power of the glyph. Then paragon nodes if they are good for your build. You should aim for at least 5 sockets. Pick up rare and magic nodes if they are close by, but focus on the path between sockets and paragon nodes.
10. Personally, I think D4 works best when you do a wide variety of content. Mix things up.

Obviously, these tips will only take you so far. The meta-builds on the various websites will most likely be stronger. But these heuristics will give you some direction if you want to try a home-brew on your own.

The War Within Official Cinematic

 

The War Within official cinematic is rather different than most of the previous expansion cinematics. There's no attempt at a narrative, it's more a collection of characters and scenes. In some ways, it harkens back to the Classic and TBC cinematics.

However, the tone is very different. It's darker and more mysterious. A lot of people have said that it's closer to a Diablo cinematic than a Warcraft one. There's a lot of truth there, as there a "lightness' to WoW which is missing here.

Still, though it's pretty interesting trailer. That Arathi shield with a flame is quite neat, and hopefully will show up as an actual item.

Arcadion Light-Heavyweight Raids

This post contains spoilers for the Arcadion raids in FFXIV: Dawntrail.

The 8-man raids in Dawntrail are centred around the Arcadion. They're basically a fun set of wrestling-style raids. This set up allows for the bosses to be themed characters, but essentially unrelated to each other. The only relation is that they use a feral animal soul.

So you end up with bosses like the good-hearted rookie who's a cat, an idol who's a bee, a "heel" (wrestling bad guy) who's a bomb king, and a serious fighter who's a levinbeast (lightning horse).

The fights are all themed well, and are well done. There are some interesting mechanics. The first fight has the boss hit the tiles. Two hits break a tile, but the players can partially control which tiles get hit.

The second fight has a mechanic where if you have to avoid getting 3 stacks. One stack is unavoidable, and half the raid has to take a second stack. But you can choose which players get the second stack, so it can allow you to make life a little easier on weaker players. Having roles like this which vary in difficulty is good, especially in the middle tier of group play.

So far, the raid is a lot of fun. Interesting fights, stylish opponents. The stakes are not too high, though the ending of this part makes the stakes higher. Not world-threatening, which is a welcome change, but still important.

Spiritborn Unveiled

 Diablo IV unveiled the new class in the upcoming Vessel of Hatred expansion: the Spiritborn.

The reactions online are pretty amusing:

It's just a druid. 

It's just a monk. 

It's just a witch doctor. 

It's just an amazon. 

Harambe!

It clearly draws a little from all these classes. The Aztec Jaguar Warrior motif is very neat. It's not something you see in many games. As well, it is a good mix of the familiar (Eagle, Jaguar) and the unusual (Gorilla, Centipede!).

I'm looking forward to Vessel of Hatred, and will probably give Spiritborn a spin in the first season. (Along with 95% of the game's population.)

Stars Reach Reveal

Raph Koster's upcoming MMO has come out of stealth: Stars Reach.

In stark contrast to most other MMOs these days, Stars Reach is unabashedly a "living world" game, rather than a theme park. It's good to see someone trying for this model again.

There do seem to be complaints about the graphics, though I'm not sure precisely why. Stylized graphics usually age better, and these games are aimed for the long haul. As well, they often have better performance, which is very important for an MMO. MMOs should be playable on a household's second computer, not just the first one.

Scattered thoughts and questions:

• There's an emphasis on simulation. How will that interact with immortal players who play at very different rates?
• The idea that "players move fast, goods move slow" is very interesting. Ideally it makes trading and multiple marketplaces and costly arbitrage possible.
• Combat seems to be primarily ranged, which will be interesting. What will the skeleton of combat look like? Threat-based, free-for-all, or maybe cover-based shooting?
• Stars Reach is expected to be Free-2-Play and sell cosmetics. Does that mean that the cosmetics will compete with crafters?
• Having it be based on multiple planets and stars is interesting. It allows the game to shrink or increase for player-size without greatly affecting the player's current planet.
• The biggest thing is that Stars Reach is going all in on player interaction. This is in strong contrast to WoW and FFXIV who are coming up with more and more ways to avoid playing with others.

All in all, Stars Reach looks like it will be very interesting. A throwback to the days before theme parks. 

But I have the feeling that it will be a niche game, and the question is if the niche will be large enough for the game to survive.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part 3

This post contains significant spoilers for the FFXIV Dawntrail Main Story Quests.

Let's ignore Wuk Lamat and discuss the rest of the MSQ. Let's start with the villains:

Bakool Ja Ja - a classic over-the-top bad guy. He gets introduced by stepping on our tacos! But it turns out he has a tragic backstory and eventually joins the heroes. Overall, Bakool Ja Ja was pretty good. The only problem with villains like these is that you can't make them do anything unforgivable, and Bakool Ja Ja came pretty close when he released Valigarmada. Probably a slight tweak to that part, maybe having Bakool Ja Ja releasing it so he could fight it, but he fails, would have been better. But overall, he's an enjoyable character.

Zoraal Ja - The problem with inscrutable villains is that they are, well, inscrutable. The player has to read deeply into their behaviour. I've seen really interesting discussions and theories about him, but they all rely on a level of subtlety that is hard to square with Wuk Lamat and the rest of the MSQ. Maybe the idea of Zoraal Ja is stronger than the actual portrayal. He plays his part well enough, but there's a nagging feeling he could have been done better.

Actually, an interesting alternate story would be your character assisting him in the trials, but he still fails and becomes the bad guy.

Sphene - Sphene would have made a much better villain in the next expansion. Her motivations are too close to Emet-Selch: restoring or preserving her people at the expense of other life. And in form and character, she's very close to Meteion. As a result, there is a very similar feel to Endwalker, and it is too soon for that. But if it wasn't for Endwalker, she would have been a very good villain.

The final half involves Alexandria and the conflict between the Alexandrian system and Eorzea. It's an interesting conflict in some ways because Eorzea puts great importance on the soul, but Alexandria puts the importance on the memories, and treats the soul as mere energy. Of course, Alexandria killing people makes it obvious which the right side is. It might have been more interesting if Alexandria was powered by memories, and the invaders didn't kill anyone, but stole their memories instead. It might even fit better with the concept of the regulators taking the memories of those who die.

Looking at the Dawntrail MSQ again, there are the bones of a great expansion. However, the timing is wrong, the themes are too close to the last expansion. And none of the pieces quite fit together smoothly. Nothing matched the high points of previous expansions.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part 2

This post contains significant spoilers for the FFXIV Dawntrail Main Story Quests.

As always, the Simpson's did it first:

Homer: Whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Poochie"?

Wuk Lamat is the Poochie of Dawntrail. You can't escape her presence. Out of six zones, she's present in five-and-a-half. The half-zone she wasn't present was blissful, until you find yourself tracking down a bracelet that belonged to her. She's almost always the main character talking. If the group splits up, you always go off with her.

Dawntrail manages to reach the nadir in the final trial. Unlike the previous trials with NPCs, it's back to the previous style where you summon a group of fellow players. The fight itself is excellent. We wiped twice, each time to a different mechanic, then mastered it on the next attempt. The fight was perfect up to the 25% mark. Then--like Jack Nicholson in The Shining--Wuk Lamat breaks into the arena. "Here's Wuk Lamat!". She basically makes the fight about her and kill-steals it. Her presence managed to completely ruin the climax of the story.

Dawntrail made me re-evaluate Stormblood. Stormblood felt like two expansions that only had enough content for 75% of a full expansion, so Square stuck them together to make one expansion. But doing this meant that Lyse and Hien balanced each other, and neither one dominated the whole thing.

I don't even think Wuk Lamat is a bad character.  But by the end, I was completely sick of her. The best part of Dawntrail was that half-zone in the middle where you got to run around with just Erenville.

It's really hard to properly evaluate Dawntrail since Wuk Lamat overshadows the entire thing. There are lots of small points one could make, good and bad. But it all seems pointless besides the elephant in the room.

Dawntrail would have been far better if Square had rotated the main NPC. Maybe Wuk Lamat for the first zones, the Erenville, then Krile. But having a single NPC as the "main character" for an entire expansion was an absolute failure, and ruined the story.

The Evolution of Diablo IV

The one game I have been playing over the last year is Diablo IV. It's been interesting to see how the game has changed since launch and the four seasons so far.

The best way to look at Diablo IV is the conflict between Diablo II and Diablo III. 

It's pretty clear that during development, Blizzard listened to the internet community lauding D2 and looking down on D3. D4 at launch was much closer to D2 and intentionally rejected a lot of the conveniences and power scaling of D3.

So naturally the story of D4 is listening to the community complain about those missing conveniences, and slowly moving D4 closer and closer to D3. More and more posts in the community are calling for an Auction House, of all things!

Now, there are a lot of good things about D4 at launch. The aesthetic was a lot darker than D3, and the player base is happy with that. The performance of the game is closer to D3. And D4 has avoided the one great mistake of D3: armour sets. Armour sets were too vital, and difference in power between getting a set and not was too large. D4 has a smoother power curve.

Season 4 redid a lot of the loot, making it more relevant, and easier to find and get the pieces that you need for your builds. Even the "uber" uniques (will be tagged as Mythic in the next season) have gotten easier and easier to find. It also introduced the Pit, which is basically D3 Greater Rifts.

(Though, to be fair, I've never gotten an uber, I generally stop before that point.)

The big conflict between Blizzard and the vocal community is endgame. Basically, Blizzard wants players  to do a variety of content during their gameplay sessions. Do a Nightmare Dungeon, do a Pit, then maybe kill a couple of bosses. The community, on the other hand, wants to figure out the single optimal activity to get power and spam it 24/7.

It is also interesting that Blizzard allowed trading once more. Now there are people selling items in chat for billions of gold, with probably a lot of gold farming and shady websites selling items for real money. Ironically, though, the high end community seems happy with this. Again, shades of D2.

I think Blizzard is on the right track with Diablo IV. The aesthetic (and trading?) of D2, the gameplay and power of D3, with a bit smoother scaling, is proving to be quite fun. If Blizzard keeps on this track, I think the upcoming expansion should be quite good.

The hard part, of course, is knowing where the line is and keeping from overstepping. For example, I think  an Auction House or class sets would harm the game more than help it.

FFXIV Dawntrail, Part I

Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion has just launched in early access. The expansion is called Dawntrail, or has I call the first part, The Excellent Adventures of Wuk Lamat.

The story so far is big step back from the world-ending threats of Endwalker. The first part of the story, up to level 94 or so, is set in the continent across the western ocean, Tural. Which is based on South and Central America. You are helping a young claimant to the throne, Wuk Lamat, in a competition to determine the next leader of Tural.

Wuk Lamat is an interesting archetype. The young, naive, good-hearted, airhead. It's a fairly common archetype in Japanese anime, but I'm not really sure it's very attractive to Western eyes. I think we prefer our main characters to be more serious. For example, Stormblood featured a similar claimant to the throne in Hien, but I think Hien worked better for Western sensibilities. The heir in exile, struggling with the weight of his duties.

Which is not to say that Wuk Lamat is a bad character. Just that the airhead-ness sometimes comes across as flippancy, especially very early in the story.

Mechanics-wise, the first part of Dawntrail is an interesting exercise in what happens when you remove fetch quests. As is tradition for these types of competitions, there's lots of arbitrary fetch quests. Except your character does very little of the fetching. Instead the NPCs you are travelling with do all the work. For example, in a previous expansion, you might have to fetch wood and then hunt some animal for dinner. Here, Alphinaud will fetch the wood, and Alisae will do the hunting.

It feels like a very strong reaction to complaints about having to do menial quests in previous expansions.

However, I'm not sure it was a good idea. It doesn't give you much to do. You're basically running your character from cutscene to cutscene, with relatively little opportunity to actually "play" your character. There's still dungeons and the occasional special duty. But the amount of interaction with the world environment and monsters feels unusually limited.

It's quite possible it's a Main Story Quest thing only, and the side-quests have all the interaction one desires. But the game encourages you to save the side-quests for later. Maybe I should consider going back and doing them on a second class before continuing on.

The dungeons and first trial are pretty good. You can actually do the trial with an NPC group this time around, and they've put in some interesting behaviour. For example, the experienced characters always avoid mechanics, but the younger characters get hit the first time they see it.

All in all, the first part of Dawntrail is slower and lighter than previous expansions. It's still pretty good, but I hope it picks up in the next sections.