For the most part, the WoD professions design worked pretty well. Having a separate building for each profession, generating a limiting reagent through work orders, and allowing limited access to a profession you don't have, all worked reasonably well.
The major flaw with professions and the garrison were the mine and herb garden. Granting free access to these resources for everyone led to a lot of busywork. The mine and garden are the leading cause of the "chore" feeling of garrisons. This design also devalued the gathering professions.
By default, it would have been better if the mine and garden only provided extra automatic garrison resource generation, with higher values as you increased the building level. That would make it worthwhile for everyone to improve those plots, but otherwise they could be ignored.
Then add two new small profession buildings. A smelter and a nursery, or similar. Creating these buildings allows you to mine ore from the mine or get herbs from the garden, respectively. Then with the level 3 building, you could get Savage Blood or Felblight from mining and herbing. (You'd probably have to rename Savage Blood, though.)
Essentially, these buildings would make mining and herbalism the same as the other professions. If you were interested in those professions, you could choose the building. If you just wanted extra resources, it would cost you a small building space. But not everyone would be interested, and not everyone would feel pressured to collect their "free" resources.
The current design is deeply unfair to gatherers. They spent one of their two profession slots on the gathering profession, deliberately eschewing another crafting profession. It was really unfair of Blizzard to give that benefit to everyone else at no cost.
This would probably decrease the supply of herbs and ore, and material costs would have to be rebalanced across the professions.
Other than the mine and farm, Savage Blood is the only real issue with professions. Where ore and herbs are too plentiful, Savage Blood is too rare, and pushes crafters towards the Barn. Felblight is a better design, being spread to all the gathering professions.
Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World of Warcraft. Show all posts
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Garrisons, Part I: Phasing
Garrisons are the signature mechanic of Warlords of Draenor. They are also a failure, and have hurt the game more than they have helped.
However, I don't think garrisons were that far from being a good mechanic. It feels like a few more iterations or tweaks could have brought garrisons to a much better place. As well, a lot of the problems with garrisons are long term problems that really only develop into serious issues after a few weeks of play.
In this series, I hope to take a look at different facets of the garrisons. To try to see where Blizzard went wrong, and what changes could have improved them.
Phasing
In my mind, the single biggest problem with garrisons is the way that they are phased. Each garrison is a personal phase for each player. this means that the player is always logging into an empty space. There are no other players around.
This very different from every previous expansion. Usually you log into a large city. In Pandaria, most people set their hearthstones to either the Shrine or Halfhill. So whenever you logged in you immediately saw other players running around. Even though Halfhill had a small phased area, it was set off from the main town.
I think this is hugely important for an MMO. Even though you may not explicitly group with other people, it's very important that the other people are present in your world. That's what makes an MMO an MMO.
In WoD, the first 10 minutes of every gaming session is spent alone, with no other players in sight. This makes WoD an intensely lonely experience. There is no "bustle", no energy, as in all the previous expansions. It's sort of the equivalent of once belonging to a large guild, but now you're the only player logging in. It's very dispiriting.
I think this is important enough to make a general rule. Players should always log in (and log out) in populated areas. A strong visual reminder that they are not alone is very important to this genre.
Solution
The best solution I can think of is to have a much more complicated phasing system. Something where common areas of the garrison, like the central courtyard are shared. Each plot would be shared with other players who have the same building on the plot as you.
So even though everyone has their own garrison, it looks like everyone is in the same garrison, and it is a bustling center with players running all over the place. Of course, this would probably be much harder to implement cleanly.
Another path would have been a system where there are multiple separate buildings in the garrison are owned by separate players. I.e. no real phasing, but an actual community. For example in a guild of 10 people, each person gets their own plot in a common guild garrison.
Of course, this system is crazy complicated, and there are lots of problems. What happens if someone leaves the guild and wants to move her plot elsewhere? What happens when people stop logging in and the plots become empty?
This system is more fit for sandbox games, I think. The complex phasing would have been a better fit for WoW.
However, I don't think garrisons were that far from being a good mechanic. It feels like a few more iterations or tweaks could have brought garrisons to a much better place. As well, a lot of the problems with garrisons are long term problems that really only develop into serious issues after a few weeks of play.
In this series, I hope to take a look at different facets of the garrisons. To try to see where Blizzard went wrong, and what changes could have improved them.
Phasing
In my mind, the single biggest problem with garrisons is the way that they are phased. Each garrison is a personal phase for each player. this means that the player is always logging into an empty space. There are no other players around.
This very different from every previous expansion. Usually you log into a large city. In Pandaria, most people set their hearthstones to either the Shrine or Halfhill. So whenever you logged in you immediately saw other players running around. Even though Halfhill had a small phased area, it was set off from the main town.
I think this is hugely important for an MMO. Even though you may not explicitly group with other people, it's very important that the other people are present in your world. That's what makes an MMO an MMO.
In WoD, the first 10 minutes of every gaming session is spent alone, with no other players in sight. This makes WoD an intensely lonely experience. There is no "bustle", no energy, as in all the previous expansions. It's sort of the equivalent of once belonging to a large guild, but now you're the only player logging in. It's very dispiriting.
I think this is important enough to make a general rule. Players should always log in (and log out) in populated areas. A strong visual reminder that they are not alone is very important to this genre.
Solution
The best solution I can think of is to have a much more complicated phasing system. Something where common areas of the garrison, like the central courtyard are shared. Each plot would be shared with other players who have the same building on the plot as you.
So even though everyone has their own garrison, it looks like everyone is in the same garrison, and it is a bustling center with players running all over the place. Of course, this would probably be much harder to implement cleanly.
Another path would have been a system where there are multiple separate buildings in the garrison are owned by separate players. I.e. no real phasing, but an actual community. For example in a guild of 10 people, each person gets their own plot in a common guild garrison.
Of course, this system is crazy complicated, and there are lots of problems. What happens if someone leaves the guild and wants to move her plot elsewhere? What happens when people stop logging in and the plots become empty?
This system is more fit for sandbox games, I think. The complex phasing would have been a better fit for WoW.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Legendaries Are The New Attunements
I just realized the other day that Blizzard brought back attunements in Mists of Pandaria. Only, in classic Blizzard fashion, they flipped them and made them driven by rewards, rather than by punishments.
The purpose of attunements is to provide a guide through content. Something that tells the player if she is ready for new content. In The Burning Crusade, that role was played by attunements. You couldn't go to Kara until you had done the quest chain, same with T5, and T6 required defeating the bosses in T5.
Now, you can jump ahead if you want, but if you follow the Legendary questline, it paces you through the content. First you do some 5-man dungeons, then you do Highmaul. You repeat Highmaul for a few weeks, and gear up as a side-effect. By the time you've done the Legendary stages of Highmaul, you're ready for Blackrock Foundry, and the process repeats.
The reward, a Legendary item, is a very strong motivator. Pretty much every guide says to start the Legendary quest line as soon as you can. That encourages you to stick to the quest line, which matches you to content that you should be geared for.
The modern Legendaries occupy the same design space as attunements. But rather than restrictions on players, they are seen as rewards. The carrot, not the stick. Players also have the freedom to skip ahead if they know what they are doing, and there are no issues with raid composition that previous attunements used to have.
I'm kind of bemused that I didn't see this before. It's excellent design work from Blizzard. And what's most amusing and impressive is that it's the same trick Blizzard always pulls.
The purpose of attunements is to provide a guide through content. Something that tells the player if she is ready for new content. In The Burning Crusade, that role was played by attunements. You couldn't go to Kara until you had done the quest chain, same with T5, and T6 required defeating the bosses in T5.
Now, you can jump ahead if you want, but if you follow the Legendary questline, it paces you through the content. First you do some 5-man dungeons, then you do Highmaul. You repeat Highmaul for a few weeks, and gear up as a side-effect. By the time you've done the Legendary stages of Highmaul, you're ready for Blackrock Foundry, and the process repeats.
The reward, a Legendary item, is a very strong motivator. Pretty much every guide says to start the Legendary quest line as soon as you can. That encourages you to stick to the quest line, which matches you to content that you should be geared for.
The modern Legendaries occupy the same design space as attunements. But rather than restrictions on players, they are seen as rewards. The carrot, not the stick. Players also have the freedom to skip ahead if they know what they are doing, and there are no issues with raid composition that previous attunements used to have.
I'm kind of bemused that I didn't see this before. It's excellent design work from Blizzard. And what's most amusing and impressive is that it's the same trick Blizzard always pulls.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
The Flight Compromise
Blizzard has compromised on flying in Warlords of Draenor. They will tie flight to a meta-achievement for outdoor world content:
It's a pretty solid compromise. All content is initially experienced as the devs intend, but people will get flight eventually. It's all solo outdoor content, so it fits thematically. It only needs to be done once, so people with lots of alts get a break.
All in all, a pretty good resolution to the issue and a good model going forward.
Leveraging the Protestant Work Ethic or Elitism
One of the most interesting things about this solution is the way it harnesses a basic instinct of many gamers. I'm not sure if there's a specific term for this, but it's somewhere in-between the Protestant work ethic and elitism. Basically, for gamers, there is a link between reward and effort. Rewards should be earned. The greater the reward, the necessary effort to earn that reward must be great as well. There is a synchronicity when effort and reward match up perfectly.
The community has just spent the last few months insisting that flying is such a great reward that it cannot be removed. This creates space for Blizzard to set the bar high to earn that reward. And then the playerbase will defend that bar as correct and right. In fact, you can see a lot of this in comments to this compromise on the various forums. The people who think these requirements are too high are generally getting mocked.
Personally, I think Blizzard has nailed the effort-to-reward match-up with this compromise. It's a fair amount of work, but it's all doable solo, and nothing is too difficult. And the reward is really good. It really is the perfect amount of work for the reward. As such, they have sated that elitism/work ethic instinct of much of the playerbase. They have won themselves a lot more defenders than if the required achievement had been much harder or much easier.
You’ll earn this achievement in Patch 6.2 by mastering the outdoor environment of Draenor—exploring Draenor’s zones, collecting 100 treasures in Draenor, completing the Draenor Loremaster and Securing Draenor achievements, and raising the three new Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered.Basically, do all the outdoor content. The reward is a rylak mount and flying in Draenor for all your characters.
It's a pretty solid compromise. All content is initially experienced as the devs intend, but people will get flight eventually. It's all solo outdoor content, so it fits thematically. It only needs to be done once, so people with lots of alts get a break.
All in all, a pretty good resolution to the issue and a good model going forward.
Leveraging the Protestant Work Ethic or Elitism
One of the most interesting things about this solution is the way it harnesses a basic instinct of many gamers. I'm not sure if there's a specific term for this, but it's somewhere in-between the Protestant work ethic and elitism. Basically, for gamers, there is a link between reward and effort. Rewards should be earned. The greater the reward, the necessary effort to earn that reward must be great as well. There is a synchronicity when effort and reward match up perfectly.
The community has just spent the last few months insisting that flying is such a great reward that it cannot be removed. This creates space for Blizzard to set the bar high to earn that reward. And then the playerbase will defend that bar as correct and right. In fact, you can see a lot of this in comments to this compromise on the various forums. The people who think these requirements are too high are generally getting mocked.
Personally, I think Blizzard has nailed the effort-to-reward match-up with this compromise. It's a fair amount of work, but it's all doable solo, and nothing is too difficult. And the reward is really good. It really is the perfect amount of work for the reward. As such, they have sated that elitism/work ethic instinct of much of the playerbase. They have won themselves a lot more defenders than if the required achievement had been much harder or much easier.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
No Flight, Part 2
Azuriel feels that Blizzard has unstated reasons behind cutting flight:
I think resorting to conspiracy theories is excessive. Let's just take Blizzard at face value, and accept that they don't like the way flying changes the game.
It's not like this attitude towards flight comes out of the blue. In TBC, the very expansion which gave us flying, we also got Sunwell Isle. Sunwell Isle was a max-level open world questing area where flight was prohibited. Raids and instanced content have never permitted flight. Some of them, like Firelands, were large enough and open enough to allow it.
PvP zones have never allowed flight. If the PvE gameplay issues with flight aren't bad, why are the PvP ones so much worse?
So from the very beginning, max-level content has not really coexisted with flight. Occasionally it's allowed, but very often it's prohibited.
However, I really liked this article from Matthew Rossi at Blizzardwatch. He argues that Blizzard "is absolutely right — flying detracts from gameplay in a host of ways. But taking it away from the player base is worse."
Flying is such a great reward, precisely because it is so powerful, that players love it. The sense of freedom, of being unbound from the 2-D world is very potent. For that reason alone, it should be kept as a reward for reaching max-level, and we should just live with gameplay issues.
I think this point of view makes a great deal of sense. That the sheer reward of flying outweighs the gameplay issues it brings.
Blizzard should bring back flying for max-level content, but try to make it a bit less convenient, while keeping as much of the feeling of reward as possible. In particular, I would single out the ability to hover as what causes the most gameplay issues with flight. I wonder if simply having flying mounts always be moving forward would be enough to keep them in check.
So here’s my theory: Blizzard is removing flying to cut future production costs.
In a world without flying, or restricting flying to specific areas, Blizzard is free to replace large swaths of the map with 2D sprites and skyboxes. This is the exact reason why you still cannot fly in Silvermoon City: the city outside the narrow roads simply doesn’t exist. Stormwind had the same issue prior to Cataclysm, if you’ll recall, but they did spend the manpower to construct a fully 3D space. They had to, because otherwise every character with a flying mount would immediately see the seams of the gameworld.
I think resorting to conspiracy theories is excessive. Let's just take Blizzard at face value, and accept that they don't like the way flying changes the game.
It's not like this attitude towards flight comes out of the blue. In TBC, the very expansion which gave us flying, we also got Sunwell Isle. Sunwell Isle was a max-level open world questing area where flight was prohibited. Raids and instanced content have never permitted flight. Some of them, like Firelands, were large enough and open enough to allow it.
PvP zones have never allowed flight. If the PvE gameplay issues with flight aren't bad, why are the PvP ones so much worse?
So from the very beginning, max-level content has not really coexisted with flight. Occasionally it's allowed, but very often it's prohibited.
However, I really liked this article from Matthew Rossi at Blizzardwatch. He argues that Blizzard "is absolutely right — flying detracts from gameplay in a host of ways. But taking it away from the player base is worse."
Flying is such a great reward, precisely because it is so powerful, that players love it. The sense of freedom, of being unbound from the 2-D world is very potent. For that reason alone, it should be kept as a reward for reaching max-level, and we should just live with gameplay issues.
I think this point of view makes a great deal of sense. That the sheer reward of flying outweighs the gameplay issues it brings.
Blizzard should bring back flying for max-level content, but try to make it a bit less convenient, while keeping as much of the feeling of reward as possible. In particular, I would single out the ability to hover as what causes the most gameplay issues with flight. I wonder if simply having flying mounts always be moving forward would be enough to keep them in check.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
No Flying in Warlords Entire
Blizzard confirmed that there will be no flying in WoD for the entirety of the expansion.
As I said in the discussion of the subscription drop, we can infer what Blizzard's numbers are telling them by their subsequent actions. This is a clear signal that Blizzard thinks that people will not unsubscribe because of the lack of flight. That they believe the expansion is stronger and more attractive without flight, and that their internal numbers are backing that view.
For example, imagine if you could not hover. If your mount was limited to the ground until you had moved forward for X seconds in a straight line (getting X momentum) and only then could you take off. And then your mount was always moving forward, so you could not hover in place, but had to circle around.
Basically make the true commando-style gameplay inconvenient, but still allow flight for travelling long distances and generally allowing freedom in the air.
All in all, the only real surprise in Blizzard disallowing flight for the full expansion is that it once again proves they are willing to cut significant existing mechanics if they feel it is damaging the game. Flight, reforging, and even the auction house in D3 are all examples.
As I said in the discussion of the subscription drop, we can infer what Blizzard's numbers are telling them by their subsequent actions. This is a clear signal that Blizzard thinks that people will not unsubscribe because of the lack of flight. That they believe the expansion is stronger and more attractive without flight, and that their internal numbers are backing that view.
That in turn implies that for most people, lack of flight is not a deal-breaker.
Personally, as I've mentioned before, I don't think flight has been good for the game. In fact, going over my older posts, I found this post from The Burning Crusade, about two weeks after I hit 70 and got my flying mount. It's kind of amusing to look back at it now, as it nailed the play-style changes and some concerns for future development:
Now with a flying mount, [questing is] very different.
Step 1: Aerial Recon - Scout out the location and find the quest mob.
Step 2: Paradrop in - Hover directly above the quest mob and dismount so you fall to the ground right there.
Step 3: Kill the target, get the quest item.
Step 4: Jump out - mount up and take off.
Very commando-style gameplay. It's interesting because there are a lot of design implications for this playstyle.All in all, I think it would have been better if flight had never been added or if it had been designed differently.
For example, imagine if you could not hover. If your mount was limited to the ground until you had moved forward for X seconds in a straight line (getting X momentum) and only then could you take off. And then your mount was always moving forward, so you could not hover in place, but had to circle around.
Basically make the true commando-style gameplay inconvenient, but still allow flight for travelling long distances and generally allowing freedom in the air.
All in all, the only real surprise in Blizzard disallowing flight for the full expansion is that it once again proves they are willing to cut significant existing mechanics if they feel it is damaging the game. Flight, reforging, and even the auction house in D3 are all examples.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Itemization Changes in 6.2
Blizzard released a Dev Watercooler on itemization changes coming in Patch 6.2. Here are some thoughts on the changes.
1. More Consistent and Visible Personal Loot
Whenever a group gets items, a certain percentage is "wasted" and ends up disenchanted. Because group loot systems can funnel loot to the people who need it, their wasted percentage is a lot lower than the wasted percentage of Personal Loot.
Blizzard appears to be increasing the amount of Personal Loot given out in order to compensate for increased wastage.
They're also moving to a more consistent model where each boss will drop roughly the same amount of loot for the group, rather than it being truly independent. For example, right now each person might have a 24% chance to get loot, which depending on RNG, could lead to anywhere from 3 to 9 pieces dropping. In the new system, exactly 6 people in the group will get loot, and the item they get is then determined from the eligible loot for their specialization.
As well, there looks to be a new UI element which shows who won loot on this boss, making loot more of a group experience.
Overall, these changes to Personal Loot are good, and will improve its attractiveness. Ideally, Personal Loot becomes the system of choice for pickup groups.
2. Secondary Stats
I'm not sure I really understand what Blizzard is trying to get at here. I think that they're saying that right now, secondary stats on gear looks like:
+100 Haste
+100 Mastery
My guess is that they want to do more things like:
+150 Haste
+50 Mastery
I don't think this will make a lot of difference. Players will just throw it into the stat weights at Wowhead and make a list of the best gear.
3. Item Level Ramp
As you go deeper into the raid, the level of items will rise. So reward continues to match difficulty.
Unless Blizzard is planning to greatly increase the size of the loot tables, I don't see the point of this. If your boots only drop from Boss A, does it matter if they're slightly higher or lower in ilvl than your gloves?
Plus, what this will probably means is that the Holy Paladin weapon (assuming Blizzard manages to remember it) will drop off an early boss, while the good healer weapon will drop off the last boss and have a higher ilvl. At least this means that Holy Paladins will get a better upgrade sooner if the raid continues into the next difficulty.
On the whole, I think the better solution to people skipping end bosses is to have specific bosses drop specific slots for all classes. Like one boss always drops boots, the next drops chests, and the last boss drops weapons. Kind of like Vanilla. That way no one wants to skip the last boss as they all want to get the items for that slot.
Conclusions
The Personal Loot changes are good changes. I don't think the other two changes are bad, but I doubt they will make any real difference.
Edit: There does seem to be a bit of a contradiction between Points 2 and 3. Point 2 wants to make the choice between Shoulder A and Shoulder B more interesting. But Point 3 wants the shoulder that drops later in the instance to be better. So unless the loot tables increase significantly, or maybe secondary stats become random (which is effectively the same thing), I think the two changes are working at cross-purposes to each other.
1. More Consistent and Visible Personal Loot
Whenever a group gets items, a certain percentage is "wasted" and ends up disenchanted. Because group loot systems can funnel loot to the people who need it, their wasted percentage is a lot lower than the wasted percentage of Personal Loot.
Blizzard appears to be increasing the amount of Personal Loot given out in order to compensate for increased wastage.
They're also moving to a more consistent model where each boss will drop roughly the same amount of loot for the group, rather than it being truly independent. For example, right now each person might have a 24% chance to get loot, which depending on RNG, could lead to anywhere from 3 to 9 pieces dropping. In the new system, exactly 6 people in the group will get loot, and the item they get is then determined from the eligible loot for their specialization.
As well, there looks to be a new UI element which shows who won loot on this boss, making loot more of a group experience.
Overall, these changes to Personal Loot are good, and will improve its attractiveness. Ideally, Personal Loot becomes the system of choice for pickup groups.
2. Secondary Stats
I'm not sure I really understand what Blizzard is trying to get at here. I think that they're saying that right now, secondary stats on gear looks like:
+100 Haste
+100 Mastery
My guess is that they want to do more things like:
+150 Haste
+50 Mastery
I don't think this will make a lot of difference. Players will just throw it into the stat weights at Wowhead and make a list of the best gear.
3. Item Level Ramp
As you go deeper into the raid, the level of items will rise. So reward continues to match difficulty.
Unless Blizzard is planning to greatly increase the size of the loot tables, I don't see the point of this. If your boots only drop from Boss A, does it matter if they're slightly higher or lower in ilvl than your gloves?
Plus, what this will probably means is that the Holy Paladin weapon (assuming Blizzard manages to remember it) will drop off an early boss, while the good healer weapon will drop off the last boss and have a higher ilvl. At least this means that Holy Paladins will get a better upgrade sooner if the raid continues into the next difficulty.
On the whole, I think the better solution to people skipping end bosses is to have specific bosses drop specific slots for all classes. Like one boss always drops boots, the next drops chests, and the last boss drops weapons. Kind of like Vanilla. That way no one wants to skip the last boss as they all want to get the items for that slot.
Conclusions
The Personal Loot changes are good changes. I don't think the other two changes are bad, but I doubt they will make any real difference.
Edit: There does seem to be a bit of a contradiction between Points 2 and 3. Point 2 wants to make the choice between Shoulder A and Shoulder B more interesting. But Point 3 wants the shoulder that drops later in the instance to be better. So unless the loot tables increase significantly, or maybe secondary stats become random (which is effectively the same thing), I think the two changes are working at cross-purposes to each other.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Legendary Ring Issues
There has been a lot of controversy over the design of the upcoming Legendary Rings in patch 3.2. Here is the current ability of the healing ring:
Use: Awakens the powers of Sanctus rings worn by you and your allies, granting (772/100)% Versatility for 15 sec.
For the duration of this effect, all damage and healing received is divided evenly among empowered allies. (2 min shared cooldown)As you can see, invoking your ring also triggers the rings of your fellow raid members. This is pretty controversial, because different classes might like to trigger their ring at different times. As well, it feels like you are giving up control of your Legendary item to someone else, be it the raid leader or just another player. Players really do not like to give up control.
The major issue with this ring though, is something slightly different: The cooldown is too short.
This ability is clearly modelled after Bloodlust. Bloodlust (and its variants) is an iconic raid-wide ability. It has a very noticeable sound and graphic, and is a very important part of raiding. But Bloodlust also has a 10-minute cooldown. This means it's only used once a fight (maybe twice on the very long fights). Thus there is some coordination, saving it for a specific phase. But at the same time, that coordination is limited. You just says "Lust at the start of Phase 3", or whenever it is necessary.
A two minute cooldown ability, on the other hand, needs to be used as much as possible. Ideally it should be used whenever it comes off cooldown, to maximize the uptime. That means lots of coordination to get the timing right. As well, if the ability is triggered incorrectly once, it throws of the entire schedule.
If I was designing the Legendary ring for a raid-wide effect, I would do something like:
Use: Increases haste by 30% for all party and raid members within 100 yards. Lasts 40 sec.
For the duration of this and similar effects, you gain Legendary Heroism, granting (772/100)% Versatility. All damage and healing received is divided evenly among allies empowered with Legendary Heroism.
Allies receiving this effect will be unable to benefit from similar effects again for 10 min.Basically, this ability is "Improved Bloodlust". You get the ability to invoke Bloodlust if you don't have it already. But now you become even more powerful under the effects of Bloodlust.
This allows Bloodlust to do the heavy lifting in terms of how the ability works in the raid. Everyone already understands how Bloodlust works, and how it should be coordinated. It really only activates once a fight, but it activates during the most important part of the fight, usually the most dangerous phase.
I think a design like this is just as "Legendary" as the current design. But it utilizes existing mechanics, making it easier to understand and coordinate.
Friday, May 08, 2015
WoW's Subscription Drop
After spiking up to 10 million subscribers last quarter, WoW has fallen back down to 7.1 million subscribers. As usual, everyone in the community takes this as evidence that whatever new element in Warlords of Draenor that they dislike is ruining the game. (I blame Active Mitigation personally, clearly inconsistent tanking is driving people away.)
I think the most likely explanation is that the Warlords of Draenor nostalgia trip plus the 10th Anniversary got a lot of old players to give the expansion a shot. They played through the expansion, then realized that WoW is more or less the same game as when they left. So they quit again, for pretty much the same reasons as before.
Of course, there could be other reasons. The big element that everyone is mentioning is Garrisons. I'm not a major fan of garrisons, but at the same time I don't think they're that bad. They're fairly low maintenance, and easily ignorable, in my view.
If I had to choose to an element which "caused" the drop, I would say that many new elements are combining to weaken guilds, and make the game excessively transient. Things like the Party Finder, cross-server groups, Personal Loot, and maybe even Flexible raiding. In my mind, guilds are a major element in making the game "sticky". Not being in a guild, not being in a community where you see the same people on a regular basis, makes it much easier to drop away.
Of course, we don't have access to data on who exactly is leaving. Blizzard does though, and the best way to find out what caused the drop is to see how Blizzard reacts. The classic example here is Cataclysm. Blizzard made dungeons very difficult, Ghostcrawler put out a post defending that difficulty, sub numbers came out, and two weeks later all the dungeons got severely nerfed.
So we will see what happens with Patch 6.2. Thus far, it looks like Blizzard's main focus is trying to get people to participate in multiple types of content. To me, that implies that players are "silo-ing", focusing on only one part of the game like raids, PvP, or pet battles. Players are not venturing out to try other aspects, even as they are becoming bored with their chosen activity.
I think the most likely explanation is that the Warlords of Draenor nostalgia trip plus the 10th Anniversary got a lot of old players to give the expansion a shot. They played through the expansion, then realized that WoW is more or less the same game as when they left. So they quit again, for pretty much the same reasons as before.
Of course, there could be other reasons. The big element that everyone is mentioning is Garrisons. I'm not a major fan of garrisons, but at the same time I don't think they're that bad. They're fairly low maintenance, and easily ignorable, in my view.
If I had to choose to an element which "caused" the drop, I would say that many new elements are combining to weaken guilds, and make the game excessively transient. Things like the Party Finder, cross-server groups, Personal Loot, and maybe even Flexible raiding. In my mind, guilds are a major element in making the game "sticky". Not being in a guild, not being in a community where you see the same people on a regular basis, makes it much easier to drop away.
Of course, we don't have access to data on who exactly is leaving. Blizzard does though, and the best way to find out what caused the drop is to see how Blizzard reacts. The classic example here is Cataclysm. Blizzard made dungeons very difficult, Ghostcrawler put out a post defending that difficulty, sub numbers came out, and two weeks later all the dungeons got severely nerfed.
So we will see what happens with Patch 6.2. Thus far, it looks like Blizzard's main focus is trying to get people to participate in multiple types of content. To me, that implies that players are "silo-ing", focusing on only one part of the game like raids, PvP, or pet battles. Players are not venturing out to try other aspects, even as they are becoming bored with their chosen activity.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Holy Paladin Weapons
I've picked up my Holy Paladin again last week and have been doing LFR and working on the Legendary Quest.
In 2011, Blizzard asked for some class feedback. Here's what I wrote at the time:
Well, I took a look at the Blackrock Foundry loot tables, to figure out which boss I need to use a coin on to increase my chances of getting a weapon.
There is not a single Holy Paladin weapon in all of LFR Blackrock Foundry! There's a staff, a wand, and a dagger.
Seriously Blizzard, this is amateur hour. Is it really so hard to write a tool/script/test that checks the loot table and spits out any spec/slot combinations which are missing?
In 2011, Blizzard asked for some class feedback. Here's what I wrote at the time:
About the only important quality of life issue I have is placement of weapons on raid bosses. Sometimes I think that Blizzard forgets that Holy Paladins are the only healing spec which cannot use staves or daggers.How has Blizzard improved on this issue?
Well, I took a look at the Blackrock Foundry loot tables, to figure out which boss I need to use a coin on to increase my chances of getting a weapon.
There is not a single Holy Paladin weapon in all of LFR Blackrock Foundry! There's a staff, a wand, and a dagger.
Seriously Blizzard, this is amateur hour. Is it really so hard to write a tool/script/test that checks the loot table and spits out any spec/slot combinations which are missing?
Monday, March 02, 2015
The WoW Token
Background
WoW is introducing a PLEX-like item: the WoW token. A player can buy it from the cash shop and sell it for in-game gold on the Auction House. The buyer can then use the item and get a month of game time.
As you know, I don't like these schemes. I simply think it is a bad idea to let strong players have a "free ride" at the expense of weaker players. WoW rests on a broad base of relatively equal subscribers, and I think that narrowing that base will end up weakening the game as a whole. As well, I don't think it's a good idea to incentivize your strong players to start gold farming in earnest. In fact, I would almost prefer WoW to sell gold directly, rather than this indirect method.
But I've lost this battle. (Though I rather doubt any game company even noticed I was fighting it.) It's clear that these sorts of items will be standard in MMOs from now on.
Specifics
Let's take a look at this specific implementation. There are some interesting nuances here.
Unlike previous implementations like PLEX, this item is not liquid. The item can only be sold once. After that it is soulbound and must be used. This means that there are no speculators involved, and the only buyers are people who actually want the game time.
As well, since the item cannot be traded, the potential for scamming is eliminated. As are external RMT-ish resellers and lotteries.
The item can only be sold through a special AH interface. Of particular note is that the player cannot set the price. Instead the game offers the player a value, and when the item sells, the player gets the offered value. In theory, the offer and sale could be different, but overall I imagine the difference will be slight.
This can be modeled as the AH purchasing the token from Player A, and then selling the token to Player B. The price offered to Player A will probably be some sort of rolling average to discourage waiting for specific windows to sell the token. For example, waiting until Saturday to sell the token because that's the day the most people are online.
I'd guess the A-side price would be something like the average price of all tokens sold on the B-side over the last 7 days. Then the B-side price would be some automatic bidding mechanism where the price increases whenever there is a sale, increases if there are no tokens available to sell, and decreases if a period of time passes without a sale.
This process probably also allows Blizzard to set a floor or ceiling on the B-side price if they deem it necessary, most likely to stop side effects from a dupe bug or similar exploit. If the price of the WoW token suddenly triples, that's likely a sign that someone has figured out an exploit.
Blizzard's clear intent is to eliminate all possible customer service issues. The process is entirely automated. There is no point where a player can exercise choice, other than to sell or not sell. So there's no opportunity for a player to make a mistake and hurt themselves.
WoW is introducing a PLEX-like item: the WoW token. A player can buy it from the cash shop and sell it for in-game gold on the Auction House. The buyer can then use the item and get a month of game time.
As you know, I don't like these schemes. I simply think it is a bad idea to let strong players have a "free ride" at the expense of weaker players. WoW rests on a broad base of relatively equal subscribers, and I think that narrowing that base will end up weakening the game as a whole. As well, I don't think it's a good idea to incentivize your strong players to start gold farming in earnest. In fact, I would almost prefer WoW to sell gold directly, rather than this indirect method.
But I've lost this battle. (Though I rather doubt any game company even noticed I was fighting it.) It's clear that these sorts of items will be standard in MMOs from now on.
Specifics
Let's take a look at this specific implementation. There are some interesting nuances here.
Unlike previous implementations like PLEX, this item is not liquid. The item can only be sold once. After that it is soulbound and must be used. This means that there are no speculators involved, and the only buyers are people who actually want the game time.
As well, since the item cannot be traded, the potential for scamming is eliminated. As are external RMT-ish resellers and lotteries.
The item can only be sold through a special AH interface. Of particular note is that the player cannot set the price. Instead the game offers the player a value, and when the item sells, the player gets the offered value. In theory, the offer and sale could be different, but overall I imagine the difference will be slight.
This can be modeled as the AH purchasing the token from Player A, and then selling the token to Player B. The price offered to Player A will probably be some sort of rolling average to discourage waiting for specific windows to sell the token. For example, waiting until Saturday to sell the token because that's the day the most people are online.
I'd guess the A-side price would be something like the average price of all tokens sold on the B-side over the last 7 days. Then the B-side price would be some automatic bidding mechanism where the price increases whenever there is a sale, increases if there are no tokens available to sell, and decreases if a period of time passes without a sale.
This process probably also allows Blizzard to set a floor or ceiling on the B-side price if they deem it necessary, most likely to stop side effects from a dupe bug or similar exploit. If the price of the WoW token suddenly triples, that's likely a sign that someone has figured out an exploit.
Blizzard's clear intent is to eliminate all possible customer service issues. The process is entirely automated. There is no point where a player can exercise choice, other than to sell or not sell. So there's no opportunity for a player to make a mistake and hurt themselves.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Currently Playing Updates
Here's what I'm currently up to:
World of Warcraft
I'm pretty much only doing the weekly garrison quest with Coriel. I've also stopped messing around with the garrison buildings. I debating doing the legendary questline, but haven't come to a decision about that yet.
For some reason, I rolled a random Blood Elf mage and got to level 5. I'm not sure if I will keep going with it, or even why I started it in the first place.
The Old Republic
My raid team has gotten to 2/10 in Hard Mode operations (1/5 Ravagers, 1/5 Temple of Sacrifice). I'm not sure what fight we'll be working on next. Gearing for Accuracy is a huge pain in this expansion, and it really isn't helping that Sniper set gear seems to not have any.
Otherwise, one major change Bioware made was to add Companion gear to the Weeklies. So I've been slowly working on kitting my companions out, especially the droid companions. Previously, droid gear was fairly annoying to get. One interesting side-effect of this change is that I roll on very little gear in ops. It's not worth the time and effort to get gear for companions from operations anymore.
I'm also leveling a Bounty Hunter, about 2/3 Dark Side and 1/3 Light Side. Professional but a bit ruthless. I'm currently on Taris.
Final Fantasy XIV
I've decided to try and get my Relic Weapon for the Paladin class. I'm currently working on the Atma book stage, and have a grand total of one book complete. ... I don't think I'll get this done.
I took a look at the new Golden Saucer stuff. It seems pretty fun, but I'm not really into mini-games.
Diablo 3
For Season 2, I started a Monk and got to about level 25 so far. This time around, I'm trying to play in public games with other people. However, I think the matchmaking buckets are now too small, since you now have to match on difficulty, character level, and story progression. So it's pretty hard to find people.
What are you up to?
World of Warcraft
I'm pretty much only doing the weekly garrison quest with Coriel. I've also stopped messing around with the garrison buildings. I debating doing the legendary questline, but haven't come to a decision about that yet.
For some reason, I rolled a random Blood Elf mage and got to level 5. I'm not sure if I will keep going with it, or even why I started it in the first place.
The Old Republic
My raid team has gotten to 2/10 in Hard Mode operations (1/5 Ravagers, 1/5 Temple of Sacrifice). I'm not sure what fight we'll be working on next. Gearing for Accuracy is a huge pain in this expansion, and it really isn't helping that Sniper set gear seems to not have any.
Otherwise, one major change Bioware made was to add Companion gear to the Weeklies. So I've been slowly working on kitting my companions out, especially the droid companions. Previously, droid gear was fairly annoying to get. One interesting side-effect of this change is that I roll on very little gear in ops. It's not worth the time and effort to get gear for companions from operations anymore.
I'm also leveling a Bounty Hunter, about 2/3 Dark Side and 1/3 Light Side. Professional but a bit ruthless. I'm currently on Taris.
Final Fantasy XIV
I've decided to try and get my Relic Weapon for the Paladin class. I'm currently working on the Atma book stage, and have a grand total of one book complete. ... I don't think I'll get this done.
I took a look at the new Golden Saucer stuff. It seems pretty fun, but I'm not really into mini-games.
Diablo 3
For Season 2, I started a Monk and got to about level 25 so far. This time around, I'm trying to play in public games with other people. However, I think the matchmaking buckets are now too small, since you now have to match on difficulty, character level, and story progression. So it's pretty hard to find people.
What are you up to?
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Account Sharing in the Mythic Race
Congratulations to Method for getting the World First Blackhand kill!
However, World First races would not be themselves without random drama. The drama this time around revolves around account sharing. More accurately, it's around the practice of transferring characters between unrelated accounts. Essentially, in order to stack classes at the very edge fights, edge guilds sometimes transfer geared alts from one player to another.
This is a clear violation of the Terms of Service. As well, Blizzard recently made an example of a couple prominent streamers for doing something similar, handing out permanent bans. So naturally there is a call for Blizzard to do the same thing to high-end raiders who transfer characters.
The argument in favor of punishment is straight-forward. Rules are rules. This practice is against the rules, and thus should be punished.
The high-end raider argument is actually rather interesting. They argue that though the actions are against the letter of the rules, they are not against the spirit of the rules.
Account sharing is banned for two reasons. First, it can often cause customer service issues. Anna uses Betty's character and then disenchants all her gear. Betty complains to customer service. The second reason is that account sharing and character transfers are often used for "boosting". Betty gives her character to Anna. Anna then power-levels the character, gets a high PvP rating, or gets a Mythic achievement for Betty. Betty is able to enjoy the rewards of such achievements, without putting in the work to earn them.
The high-end raiders point out that neither of these reasons apply. There won't be any customer service issues. There is also no boosting going on. Before the transfer, there are 20 players. After the transfer, there are the same 20 players in the raid, just one is on a different character.
They also point out that the secondary effects of a "zero tolerance" policy might be negative. Guilds might start requiring that players have and gear up even more extra characters. Or they might start to sport larger rosters, with a much larger bench that is only brought in when class stacking is required. This bench, of course, would drawn from the guilds directly below them, and they in turn would need to poach more people from the groups below. All this just for an extra ten or fifteen people who barely get to raid.
I find myself torn between the two arguments. Rules are rules, and it is essential for the rules to be applied impartially in a game. Yet at the same time, I think the high end argument is essentially right. What they are doing is not the same underlying negative behavior the rules were meant to guard against.
My Solution - Disallow Class-Stacking
My solution, as normal, is extreme. The root of the problem is class-stacking. So let's disallow class-stacking in Mythic. Mythic already has one strict restriction requiring a maximum of 20 players.
Let's add another restriction: a raid can have a maximum of 3 characters of any given class in a Mythic instance. Three druids, three paladins, three monks, three warlocks, etc.
This cuts off class-stacking at the knees. Mythic is already for the most experienced and skilled players, so another restriction is not going to faze them. It reduces the number of alts required by the high end, maybe even making life a little easier.
Then Blizzard can stop turning a blind eye to account sharing or character transfer at the high end. The rules could be applied impartially.
However, World First races would not be themselves without random drama. The drama this time around revolves around account sharing. More accurately, it's around the practice of transferring characters between unrelated accounts. Essentially, in order to stack classes at the very edge fights, edge guilds sometimes transfer geared alts from one player to another.
This is a clear violation of the Terms of Service. As well, Blizzard recently made an example of a couple prominent streamers for doing something similar, handing out permanent bans. So naturally there is a call for Blizzard to do the same thing to high-end raiders who transfer characters.
The argument in favor of punishment is straight-forward. Rules are rules. This practice is against the rules, and thus should be punished.
The high-end raider argument is actually rather interesting. They argue that though the actions are against the letter of the rules, they are not against the spirit of the rules.
Account sharing is banned for two reasons. First, it can often cause customer service issues. Anna uses Betty's character and then disenchants all her gear. Betty complains to customer service. The second reason is that account sharing and character transfers are often used for "boosting". Betty gives her character to Anna. Anna then power-levels the character, gets a high PvP rating, or gets a Mythic achievement for Betty. Betty is able to enjoy the rewards of such achievements, without putting in the work to earn them.
The high-end raiders point out that neither of these reasons apply. There won't be any customer service issues. There is also no boosting going on. Before the transfer, there are 20 players. After the transfer, there are the same 20 players in the raid, just one is on a different character.
They also point out that the secondary effects of a "zero tolerance" policy might be negative. Guilds might start requiring that players have and gear up even more extra characters. Or they might start to sport larger rosters, with a much larger bench that is only brought in when class stacking is required. This bench, of course, would drawn from the guilds directly below them, and they in turn would need to poach more people from the groups below. All this just for an extra ten or fifteen people who barely get to raid.
I find myself torn between the two arguments. Rules are rules, and it is essential for the rules to be applied impartially in a game. Yet at the same time, I think the high end argument is essentially right. What they are doing is not the same underlying negative behavior the rules were meant to guard against.
My Solution - Disallow Class-Stacking
My solution, as normal, is extreme. The root of the problem is class-stacking. So let's disallow class-stacking in Mythic. Mythic already has one strict restriction requiring a maximum of 20 players.
Let's add another restriction: a raid can have a maximum of 3 characters of any given class in a Mythic instance. Three druids, three paladins, three monks, three warlocks, etc.
This cuts off class-stacking at the knees. Mythic is already for the most experienced and skilled players, so another restriction is not going to faze them. It reduces the number of alts required by the high end, maybe even making life a little easier.
Then Blizzard can stop turning a blind eye to account sharing or character transfer at the high end. The rules could be applied impartially.
Friday, February 20, 2015
WoW Videos: Welcome to the Deadmines
Here's another classic WoW video by Adrian Drott, Irdeen, and Jessie Cox: Welcome to the Deadmines.
This is from before the revamped Deadmines had been revealed.
It's from the Rise to Power contest back in 2010. That contest produced a lot of good videos, including Greyfoo's Scarlet Toy. I'm not entirely certain why that contest in particular was so productive. Perhaps the topic was just restrictive enough to fuel creativity, without being too constraining.
This is from before the revamped Deadmines had been revealed.
It's from the Rise to Power contest back in 2010. That contest produced a lot of good videos, including Greyfoo's Scarlet Toy. I'm not entirely certain why that contest in particular was so productive. Perhaps the topic was just restrictive enough to fuel creativity, without being too constraining.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Chores, Feeling "Forced" and "Nothing to do"
I saw this excellent post by Torvald on the WoW forums. It's long, and a little hard to excerpt, but it's well worth your time.
Essentially, Torvald says that a lot of people on the forums are complaining about "having 'nothing to do' and the sense of being forced to spend all your time in garrisons doing garrison chores." But this isn't actually true, as he goes on to list the many, many activities available in current WoW. And he's right. Objectively, there are more activities available in Warlords than in any of the past versions.
So what then accounts for the general feeling of malaise? Torvald theorizes that the first few minutes of gaming session set the tone for the remainder of the session. Spending the first 15 minutes when you log in on garrison maintenance drains the player of energy, and that pushes them to log out instead of continuing on with a more fun activity.
So why then do players insist on doing those chores first? Torvald offers this explanation:
I think that in a lot of ways Torvald is right. I don't play WoW often these days, but whenever I do play, I ignore my garrison completely and jump straight into whatever activity I really want to do.
Essentially, Torvald says that a lot of people on the forums are complaining about "having 'nothing to do' and the sense of being forced to spend all your time in garrisons doing garrison chores." But this isn't actually true, as he goes on to list the many, many activities available in current WoW. And he's right. Objectively, there are more activities available in Warlords than in any of the past versions.
So what then accounts for the general feeling of malaise? Torvald theorizes that the first few minutes of gaming session set the tone for the remainder of the session. Spending the first 15 minutes when you log in on garrison maintenance drains the player of energy, and that pushes them to log out instead of continuing on with a more fun activity.
So why then do players insist on doing those chores first? Torvald offers this explanation:
People hate the sense that a reward dangled right in front of them will be lost permanently if they fail to act. The Garrison chores are a perfect example of this. Anytime you fail to act, you give up a reward. The reward is sitting right in front of you, requiring you to do nothing more than interact with it to pick it up (mine nodes, herb garden, work orders). The more accessible a reward is to your initial log-in point, the more you will feel like the "right" way to play is to engage with it. Not doing the task to get the reward makes you feel like you're stupidly giving up a gain, and no one likes to feel as if they're playing the game "wrong." So you feel compelled mentally to engage that content. [Emphasis mine.]He offers some suggestions about how WoW can go about remedying this. The post is a lot longer that what I've summarized, and contains some other interesting ideas. It's worth reading.
I think that in a lot of ways Torvald is right. I don't play WoW often these days, but whenever I do play, I ignore my garrison completely and jump straight into whatever activity I really want to do.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Mythic Alt Runs, Attuning Items
I think we got a little far from what I really wanted to discuss with the last post on Mythic Alt Runs. The way I see it, there are three possibilities:
- Mythic alt runs are fine, so we don't need to do anything.
- Mythic alt runs are unhealthy, but the cure would be worse than the disease.
- Mythic alt runs are unhealthy, and need to be fixed.
Personally, I'm leaning towards option 2. I think the alt runs are unhealthy for the game, and hurt the experience of the top guilds. But on the other hand, that's only a very small portion of the audience. Furthermore, those people are known for doing crazy things in pursuit of World Firsts. If they didn't do alt runs, they'd probably be doing something else just as unhealthy.
Previous excesses in the top guilds, like consumable or class stacking, caused issues because it was required for lower tier guilds to do the same thing to beat those fights. In contrast, alt runs just accelerate the process of getting gear. In a couple months, a regular raid will catch up with enough gear.
As well, any solution to alt runs would end up hitting all the other raiders in the game. This would probably hurt their experience.
I can only see two solutions to alt runs. First, Gevlon suggested that Heroic Mode use Personal Loot. This would stop alt runs for sure. However, many players--including myself--really dislike Personal Loot, especially for guild raids. It's a necessary evil for LFR and pick-up groups, since you can't trust everyone, but not something to be used for true extended content.
Attuning Items
The second solution would be a cap on how many new epics can be equipped in a given time period. For example, imagine that items had three states:
- Unbound - can be traded to other players
- Soulbound - cannot be traded to other players
- Attuned - cannot be traded to other players
Simply getting a Bind-On-Pickup item makes it soulbound. But actually equipping an item "attunes" it. The restriction would be that you can only attune 1 or 2 items a week. Once you've hit your limit, you simply can't equip new items.
There are some advantages to this scheme. You can put in a lot of different ways to get epics, without making a player "need" to do all of them. You could make a rule that the limit only applies to epics, and that gives blue items a slight advantage over epics, which might come in handy when introducing new content such as 5-man dungeons. It generally slows the pace of gear acquisition down, and spreads it out, rather than getting the majority of your items quickly and then waiting for the last few pieces to dribble in.
But it would be a big change. It might be a good change, but it's also not a change that should be done just to stop Mythic alt runs.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Are Mythic Alt Raids a Problem?
WoW just released the latest raid, Blackrock Foundry, and the race for Mythic World First is in full swing. However, all the edge guilds are using a potentially worrisome tactic, perhaps one that could cause issues if it filters into the playerbase at large.
Each guild is running multiple (around 5 or more) Hard Mode raids, and funneling loot to the main raiders in each group. For example, the group takes 26 alts and 4 main raiders and clears Hard Mode. Every single piece of loot goes to those 4 main characters. The raid is 30 people to maximize the amount of loot per main. They then do this multiple times, until all their mains have run through the instance. Almost all edge guilds did this last week, when Mythic wasn't open.
Paragon, the guild who won the Highmaul race (and many other World Firsts from previous expansions), even delayed starting Mythic this reset in order to do the HM clears and funnel loot to mains. As a result, they started late, but have rapidly caught up. If Paragon ends up clearing Blackrock Foundry first, it's certain that all the other Mythic guilds will start imitating them.
This tactic is pretty hard to stop. And it does put a large burden on raiders. Each raider needs to maintain 5 or more raid-worthy characters, and run the lower instance multiple times each week. And that's even before we get into the actual Mythic content.
To be honest, the only mechanic I can think of that would stop this tactic is to cap the number of new epics a character can gain or equip per week. And that would hit everybody. Of course, a normal player generally doesn't get a lot of epics each week in regular play.
So maybe this is a case of just letting edge players kill themselves if they so desire. However, this tactic can work at lower levels too. A guild targeting Hard Modes could funnel loot from Normal Mode raids. I'm not certain that funneling loot would spread to lower tier guilds, but it certainly will become the norm among all the Mythic guilds.
It might be worthwhile to restrict everyone to prevent the high end guilds from demanding that every applicant have 5 raid-worthy characters.
Edit: it occurs to me that there's another reason that alt runs have become significantly better this expansion: gear consolidation.
In previous expansions, if you were a Holy Paladin, you could expect that 2/3 of the plate dropped were strength plate, and 1/3 were intellect. Now all plate drops are usable. So that's 50-200% more loot for each character, with a corresponding 50-200% more chance for Warforged or socketed gear.
That's the same for every class, even cloth, since spirit is no longer on armor.
Each guild is running multiple (around 5 or more) Hard Mode raids, and funneling loot to the main raiders in each group. For example, the group takes 26 alts and 4 main raiders and clears Hard Mode. Every single piece of loot goes to those 4 main characters. The raid is 30 people to maximize the amount of loot per main. They then do this multiple times, until all their mains have run through the instance. Almost all edge guilds did this last week, when Mythic wasn't open.
Paragon, the guild who won the Highmaul race (and many other World Firsts from previous expansions), even delayed starting Mythic this reset in order to do the HM clears and funnel loot to mains. As a result, they started late, but have rapidly caught up. If Paragon ends up clearing Blackrock Foundry first, it's certain that all the other Mythic guilds will start imitating them.
This tactic is pretty hard to stop. And it does put a large burden on raiders. Each raider needs to maintain 5 or more raid-worthy characters, and run the lower instance multiple times each week. And that's even before we get into the actual Mythic content.
To be honest, the only mechanic I can think of that would stop this tactic is to cap the number of new epics a character can gain or equip per week. And that would hit everybody. Of course, a normal player generally doesn't get a lot of epics each week in regular play.
So maybe this is a case of just letting edge players kill themselves if they so desire. However, this tactic can work at lower levels too. A guild targeting Hard Modes could funnel loot from Normal Mode raids. I'm not certain that funneling loot would spread to lower tier guilds, but it certainly will become the norm among all the Mythic guilds.
It might be worthwhile to restrict everyone to prevent the high end guilds from demanding that every applicant have 5 raid-worthy characters.
Edit: it occurs to me that there's another reason that alt runs have become significantly better this expansion: gear consolidation.
In previous expansions, if you were a Holy Paladin, you could expect that 2/3 of the plate dropped were strength plate, and 1/3 were intellect. Now all plate drops are usable. So that's 50-200% more loot for each character, with a corresponding 50-200% more chance for Warforged or socketed gear.
That's the same for every class, even cloth, since spirit is no longer on armor.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Twitter Integration
World of Warcraft is introducing Twitter Integration in Patch 6.1:
Reaction, at least on the forums and in comments, seems to be fairly negative. At best, people feel it is a waste of resources. At worst, some people believe this heralds the decline of Western Civilization.
I take the opposite position. Now, I tried Twitter for a bit, and then dropped it, so this is a feature I will never use. However, there are a couple of positive results from Blizzard undertaking this.
First, consider the "This is EVE" trailer. If there is one lesson that MMOs should take from that trailer, it is that genuine player enthusiasm is the best way to market these games. Players visibly having fun playing these games, and getting excited over random things, are an enormously powerful tool for attracting new players or bringing back lapsed players.
Twitter integration is a easy way to expose genuine player activity to others. Since players are fully in control of their tweets, they will tweet things at an acceptable level. Or at least a level where they avoid everyone unfollowing them.
Second, this is a low stakes project for Blizzard devs to work with integrating with another company's service. At least one where the end user triggers the external service during gameplay. In many ways, the computer world is moving towards integration of services from many different companies, or even within the same company.
While not complex, there are always small things that go wrong with these things. You have to account for the other company behaving weirdly, or changing the rules on you. Developing best practices in a simple project like this can help with future projects. For example, Twitch.tv integration in future games.
I think that those two reasons--especially the marketing one--are good enough to make this project worthwhile.
We have a new feature coming in Patch 6.1 that’ll allow you to send out Tweets directly to your Twitter feed while playing World of Warcraft. It includes the ability to send out text-only Tweets; easily take, crop, and Tweet out in-game screenshots; and let your friends know about your recent accomplishments.It's not automated at all, and looks to be entirely under the player's control. If there is Twitter spam, that will be entirely the fault of the player.
Reaction, at least on the forums and in comments, seems to be fairly negative. At best, people feel it is a waste of resources. At worst, some people believe this heralds the decline of Western Civilization.
I take the opposite position. Now, I tried Twitter for a bit, and then dropped it, so this is a feature I will never use. However, there are a couple of positive results from Blizzard undertaking this.
First, consider the "This is EVE" trailer. If there is one lesson that MMOs should take from that trailer, it is that genuine player enthusiasm is the best way to market these games. Players visibly having fun playing these games, and getting excited over random things, are an enormously powerful tool for attracting new players or bringing back lapsed players.
Twitter integration is a easy way to expose genuine player activity to others. Since players are fully in control of their tweets, they will tweet things at an acceptable level. Or at least a level where they avoid everyone unfollowing them.
Second, this is a low stakes project for Blizzard devs to work with integrating with another company's service. At least one where the end user triggers the external service during gameplay. In many ways, the computer world is moving towards integration of services from many different companies, or even within the same company.
While not complex, there are always small things that go wrong with these things. You have to account for the other company behaving weirdly, or changing the rules on you. Developing best practices in a simple project like this can help with future projects. For example, Twitch.tv integration in future games.
I think that those two reasons--especially the marketing one--are good enough to make this project worthwhile.
Friday, February 06, 2015
WoW Videos: Phantom of the Battleground
This video came out in 2013, but it came up when I was surfing YouTube recently. It is still excellent. The lyrics, video, and voices are just amazing. Using The Phantom of the Opera was inspired. The video is by Roghar, the male singer is Kavo and the female singer is SilverLetomi.
This is probably the best "parody" style WoW video I have seen.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Rationing Loot
Most games ration the top tiers of loot in some fashion. They do this to draw out the process of gearing up, and to give people an excuse to log in and continue to play.
For example, WoW uses raid lockouts combined with a random chance of items dropping. You can only do a boss once per week, and you have X% chance of your item dropping. This method is exciting, but can be streaky.
The percent chance can be for the entire group or for the individual, as in the case of WoW's personal loot system. I think the entire group method is better, as it is more apparent that the reward is for the entire group. As well, in a good group, very little loot is wasted. Unfortunately, as LFR proved, you can't trust a random group of strangers to distribute loot reasonably.
The other common method is an end-game currency where the amount you can earn per week is limited. Thus, you know an item costs exactly Y points, which will take you exactly Z runs. This method is perfectly deterministic, but rather boring.
Of all the rationing methods in the MMOs I've played, I like the system used by FFXIV's 24-man raids the best. A separate item drops for each 8-player group within the raid. If it's for your role, you may roll Need. Otherwise you can only Greed. But you can only win one piece from the instance per week. You can do the instance as often as you want. You can fish for a specific item or just take the first item for your class that drops. You can roll for your alternate specs if you want, but if a main-spec in the raid wants the item, they will win.
This "one item per week" restriction is a very blunt instrument. It's very meta as well. There's no real in-game rational for it at all. But it just works. People only roll on items they want, since there is a significant cost to winning. The tank gets the tank item if she needs it. There's no chance of a damage dealer winning the item over the tank. The item drops for the group as a whole, and people who win stuff get congratulated. It feels like a team working for a common reward, which is something that WoW's LFR has lost.
Of course, FFXIV also has an alternate raid currency. So even if you don't win anything that drops during a run, you accumulate the raid currency and can buy gear that way.
For example, WoW uses raid lockouts combined with a random chance of items dropping. You can only do a boss once per week, and you have X% chance of your item dropping. This method is exciting, but can be streaky.
The percent chance can be for the entire group or for the individual, as in the case of WoW's personal loot system. I think the entire group method is better, as it is more apparent that the reward is for the entire group. As well, in a good group, very little loot is wasted. Unfortunately, as LFR proved, you can't trust a random group of strangers to distribute loot reasonably.
The other common method is an end-game currency where the amount you can earn per week is limited. Thus, you know an item costs exactly Y points, which will take you exactly Z runs. This method is perfectly deterministic, but rather boring.
Of all the rationing methods in the MMOs I've played, I like the system used by FFXIV's 24-man raids the best. A separate item drops for each 8-player group within the raid. If it's for your role, you may roll Need. Otherwise you can only Greed. But you can only win one piece from the instance per week. You can do the instance as often as you want. You can fish for a specific item or just take the first item for your class that drops. You can roll for your alternate specs if you want, but if a main-spec in the raid wants the item, they will win.
This "one item per week" restriction is a very blunt instrument. It's very meta as well. There's no real in-game rational for it at all. But it just works. People only roll on items they want, since there is a significant cost to winning. The tank gets the tank item if she needs it. There's no chance of a damage dealer winning the item over the tank. The item drops for the group as a whole, and people who win stuff get congratulated. It feels like a team working for a common reward, which is something that WoW's LFR has lost.
Of course, FFXIV also has an alternate raid currency. So even if you don't win anything that drops during a run, you accumulate the raid currency and can buy gear that way.
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