Tobold has an interesting post, Making Quests Less Anti-Social, where he argues that people do not group up for quests because quests "*must* be done alone if the players want to maximize rewards".
I agree that most people don't group up with strangers when doing solo quests. However, I've always found grouping to be more efficient, especially for reducing downtime. Additionally, grouping with people is usually more fun than going it alone.
Second, if players were going solo to maximize reward, I would think that if you asked someone to group, they would turn you down. Yet my experience is that if you encounter someone doing the same quest as you, and you ask if you can join their group, 90% of the time they will send you an invite. To me, that behaviour implies that maximizing reward is not the reason that people don't group.
I think people don't group because they are ambivalent about approaching strangers. Maybe it's fear of rejection, a desire not to impose on someone else, or feeling bad about asking for help. But my experience is that a lot of people are perfectly willing to group up, they just don't want to be the one to ask. And because you can solo most quests, they don't ask unless they have to.
In some ways, I think this behaviour is at the heart of the whole 'clique' issue in a lot of guilds. You join a guild, and your guildmates become something more than strangers, but less than friends (at least at the start). It's still hard to approach them and ask if you can join them, because they are sort-of strangers. Yet it still stings when they leave you out, because they are sort-of friends, and you expect your friends to ask you to do stuff.
So I don't know how to solve this. Maybe Public Quests in Warhammer Online will solve this problem, by implicitly grouping people in the same area on the same quest, without making one party formally ask and risk rejection. In WoW, though, if you are willing to take the first step, and ask for help on the General channel, or whisper someone you see working on the same quest, you may be surprised at how easy it is to group up with a perfect stranger.
Funny/weird grouping story: A couple of nights ago, I grouped with a mage to do another Arathi Highlands quest. This mage didn't like buffs. He didn't run Arcane Intellect, didn't cast a mage Armor. He even asked me to turn off my Aura (I was on a paladin alt--yeah, I'm not really sure why, either). I wasn't able to figure out why he had an aversion to buffs, but he was a nice guy in all other respects and we finished that quest easily.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Video Games, Art, and Social Status
Lume the Mad has an interesting post discussing whether video games are art. It's a good entry in the "Yes, Video games are art" side of the debate. This debate has raged all over the place, so I thought I may as well toss in my two cents.
My take: I don't really see why it matters if video games are Art or not.
To be honest, most of the arguments on either side boil down to how you define Art. I can construct definitions of Art such that video games fit. For example, video games can convey messages; they often use many of the same techniques of writing, dialog, etc.; they engage our aesthetic senses.
I can also construct definitions of Art such that video games do not fit. For example, Art requires an audience, video games require participants or players. As well, often the best game does not match the most artistic game, and that is incongruous for an Art. Tetris may very well be the best video game ever made, but is it the most artistic?
The more I listen and read the debates about video games and Art, the more I become convinced that this debate isn't about Art at all, it is about social status.
It's pretty clear that game developers and game players in our culture have low social status, especially in comparison to artists. This whole debate is gamers are trying to say that video games are like films and novels, so the culture should treat game developers like filmmakers and novelists, and game players like film buffs or literati.
Honestly, that's not going to happen anytime soon. The gatekeepers of culture don't care about your reasoned arguments. Social status doesn't really have anything to do who or what deserves that status. If anything, it's a function of how the wealthy and the intelligentsia differentiate themselves from the rest of masses. Oprah is not going to have a Video Game of the Month Club. She's not going to treat Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto like Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou. Roger Ebert won't treat them like Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese.
For one thing, video games are popular. In particular, the "good" games are often the same as the most popular games. The upper classes can't give games the high status of Art, as that would implicitly give high social status to the plebes, defeating the point of having social status in the first place.
To me, this entire debate smacks of the divide between cool kids and the unpopular kids in high school, only brought forward into the adult world. The unpopular kids are busy constructing arguments that the cool kids should consider them "cool", not realizing that none of these arguments actually matter. This was pretty pointless in high school, and it's even more pointless now.
Games are games. If they are not Art, that does not make them lesser than they are. If they are Art, that does not make them greater. And in the end, social status does not obey reasoned arguments.
My take: I don't really see why it matters if video games are Art or not.
To be honest, most of the arguments on either side boil down to how you define Art. I can construct definitions of Art such that video games fit. For example, video games can convey messages; they often use many of the same techniques of writing, dialog, etc.; they engage our aesthetic senses.
I can also construct definitions of Art such that video games do not fit. For example, Art requires an audience, video games require participants or players. As well, often the best game does not match the most artistic game, and that is incongruous for an Art. Tetris may very well be the best video game ever made, but is it the most artistic?
The more I listen and read the debates about video games and Art, the more I become convinced that this debate isn't about Art at all, it is about social status.
It's pretty clear that game developers and game players in our culture have low social status, especially in comparison to artists. This whole debate is gamers are trying to say that video games are like films and novels, so the culture should treat game developers like filmmakers and novelists, and game players like film buffs or literati.
Honestly, that's not going to happen anytime soon. The gatekeepers of culture don't care about your reasoned arguments. Social status doesn't really have anything to do who or what deserves that status. If anything, it's a function of how the wealthy and the intelligentsia differentiate themselves from the rest of masses. Oprah is not going to have a Video Game of the Month Club. She's not going to treat Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto like Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou. Roger Ebert won't treat them like Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese.
For one thing, video games are popular. In particular, the "good" games are often the same as the most popular games. The upper classes can't give games the high status of Art, as that would implicitly give high social status to the plebes, defeating the point of having social status in the first place.
To me, this entire debate smacks of the divide between cool kids and the unpopular kids in high school, only brought forward into the adult world. The unpopular kids are busy constructing arguments that the cool kids should consider them "cool", not realizing that none of these arguments actually matter. This was pretty pointless in high school, and it's even more pointless now.
Games are games. If they are not Art, that does not make them lesser than they are. If they are Art, that does not make them greater. And in the end, social status does not obey reasoned arguments.
Being on the Path, Part II
In a comment to Being on the Path, Messallina/Agrippina of Perenolde, writes:
I should have introduced the concept of "Being on the Path" earlier, rather than attempting to force that one article to do double duty. I actually came up with it a long time ago, back in the pre-TBC days, just never really blogged about it. If you look at Casual vs Raider, Part VI, written in Jan 2007, you'll see the same idea echoed.
Essentially, I was looking at the introduction of Naxxramas, and the great flamewars on the forums between the casuals and the hardcore. One thing that struck me was the lower raid guilds, the ones in MC and BWL, sided with the high-end guilds, instead of the casual players who wanted Blizzard to spend more time on regular 5-man and lower content. This seemed odd to me, as the MC/BWL guilds had practically no chance of seeing very much of Naxx, and would have benefited much more from new 5-man dungeons instead of a new raid instance.
From the practical standpoint of who would actually experience the content, the split should have occurred between the AQ40 top-end guilds vs the MC/BWL/non-raiders. Yet the actual split was between those who could raid, and who could not raid; those who were on the path, and those who were not.
I can't really cite scientific proof of any of this. I don't have access to any real data. All I can offer is my observations and my experiences, and my theories and explanations. This is punditry, not science.
But the concept of Being on the Path is why I've usually concentrated my suggestions on ways to get more guilds raiding. To me, making it easier for guilds to raid is a much better use of resources than making additional 5-mans or even additional raid instances. That transition from normal guild to raiding guild is the most crucial transition in the game, and something which could use a lot more attention.
Premise 2: Hope is more important de jure than de facto. In other words, theoretically possible hopes motivate players more than practically possible hopes.
Premise 2 is not exactly how I would word it. I would invert it. Hopelessness (or the impossibility of doing something) de jure is worse than hopelessness de facto. Knowing that something is guaranteed to be impossible for you is a lot more demoralizing than knowing that something is most likely not possible.
Now, I don't know if this will really result in less people playing season 4. S3 was different in that most of the armor could be obtained. Yeah a couple pieces were out of reach, but you could still get most of S3. I felt it still came doing on the de facto side. As well, coming later means that more people hit 70 and started PvPing for gear. Not to mention that S3 pushed PvP into T6 territory, ahead of the vast majority of raiders, who were still stuck in T5 content (Vashj/Kael). All that combines into more people playing S3 than S2.
S4 is different. All the pieces have requirements on them, all of which are higher than the average. That immediately guarantees that at least 50% of the audience will not be able to get any of S4. However, PvP doesn't really require a lot of time or organization. It's pretty easy to just do your 10 games and go. So even if people aren't happy about the S4 requirements, they may still put in their 10 games. Some improvement is better than none, especially if the time cost is minimal.
If PvP actually required a significant time cost--like raiding does--I would expect participation to diminish sharply. However, because the time cost is so low, I'm not sure what will happen. I do think the rating requirements will diminish enthusiasm for PvP, and satisfaction with the game. But that is hard to measure and hard to see, and whether that translate into diminished participation or subscriptions is an open question.
I've only seen one other poster here who identified themselves as a gladiator level pvp'er, so even though this post is already filled with comments I still feel I can offer a distinct take on things. Also, as an additional disclaimer I will add that for entirely selfish reasons I am emotionally biased towards rating requirements for gear. Goddamnit getting gladiator skills took a long time and I want more tangible rewards besides just obtaining gear faster and a sweet title/mount!
Looking over Coriel's post, I see a couple of basic points that I would like to lay out before I respond to them:
Premise 1: Hope for achievement drives players (duh).
Premise 2: Hope is more important de jure than de facto. In other words, theoretically possible hopes motivate players more than practically possible hopes.
Conclusion: Rating requirements are inherently discouraging, even to those who won't get enough non-rating-required gear to the point where the only gear remaining has rating requirements.
Premise 2 is the weak one I feel, for the following reasons.
First off, I don't see any evidence for your de jure progression theory. You make an effective analogy with raiding, but there's no evidence offered that that is the case with raiding. It's like you cited something faulty in a scientific paper without checking the source. Back when I raided casual at 60 with a guild that was lucky to kill Nefarian before BC came out I doubt I would've cared two shits if Naxxramas had had some kind of blocking requirement for entry. I was worried about the present instance, along with the rest of my guild. Your claim was that de jure impediments demoralize people even if they have no plausible tangible harm, but I don't see any reason for that, and I don't buy that even pvp'ers who will never find themselves in a situation where their access to gear is limited only by personal rating will still be significantly demoralized by the rating requirements on gear. After all, the lower your personal rating, the slower you earn gear, which I know you understand: "In reality, of course, a casual PvPer is not likely to earn all the pieces of S4 before WotLK. But again, what is likely is not as important as what is possible."
Second off, I dont think it was accidental that rating requirements reached their apex for BC in the final season. For each day that elapses in this final arena season of BC players will care less and less about season 4 gear as lich king draws nearer.
Also, since I'm all about the empirical evidence, it's worth noting that more teams participated in 3v3 in my battlegroup in season 3 than season 2. Almost 40% more, in fact ( Arena Junkies; WoW Armory: Cyclone Battlegroup)
It doesn't seem that the 1850/2000 rating requirements significantly lowered (in one casual pvp'ers words) the "popularity" of arena from S2 to S3. After all, players have been "blocked" in arena from the start, given the stern title requirements since Season 1. Obviously, gear>titles for most people, but it's worth pointing out.
I should have introduced the concept of "Being on the Path" earlier, rather than attempting to force that one article to do double duty. I actually came up with it a long time ago, back in the pre-TBC days, just never really blogged about it. If you look at Casual vs Raider, Part VI, written in Jan 2007, you'll see the same idea echoed.
Essentially, I was looking at the introduction of Naxxramas, and the great flamewars on the forums between the casuals and the hardcore. One thing that struck me was the lower raid guilds, the ones in MC and BWL, sided with the high-end guilds, instead of the casual players who wanted Blizzard to spend more time on regular 5-man and lower content. This seemed odd to me, as the MC/BWL guilds had practically no chance of seeing very much of Naxx, and would have benefited much more from new 5-man dungeons instead of a new raid instance.
From the practical standpoint of who would actually experience the content, the split should have occurred between the AQ40 top-end guilds vs the MC/BWL/non-raiders. Yet the actual split was between those who could raid, and who could not raid; those who were on the path, and those who were not.
I can't really cite scientific proof of any of this. I don't have access to any real data. All I can offer is my observations and my experiences, and my theories and explanations. This is punditry, not science.
But the concept of Being on the Path is why I've usually concentrated my suggestions on ways to get more guilds raiding. To me, making it easier for guilds to raid is a much better use of resources than making additional 5-mans or even additional raid instances. That transition from normal guild to raiding guild is the most crucial transition in the game, and something which could use a lot more attention.
Premise 2: Hope is more important de jure than de facto. In other words, theoretically possible hopes motivate players more than practically possible hopes.
Premise 2 is not exactly how I would word it. I would invert it. Hopelessness (or the impossibility of doing something) de jure is worse than hopelessness de facto. Knowing that something is guaranteed to be impossible for you is a lot more demoralizing than knowing that something is most likely not possible.
Now, I don't know if this will really result in less people playing season 4. S3 was different in that most of the armor could be obtained. Yeah a couple pieces were out of reach, but you could still get most of S3. I felt it still came doing on the de facto side. As well, coming later means that more people hit 70 and started PvPing for gear. Not to mention that S3 pushed PvP into T6 territory, ahead of the vast majority of raiders, who were still stuck in T5 content (Vashj/Kael). All that combines into more people playing S3 than S2.
S4 is different. All the pieces have requirements on them, all of which are higher than the average. That immediately guarantees that at least 50% of the audience will not be able to get any of S4. However, PvP doesn't really require a lot of time or organization. It's pretty easy to just do your 10 games and go. So even if people aren't happy about the S4 requirements, they may still put in their 10 games. Some improvement is better than none, especially if the time cost is minimal.
If PvP actually required a significant time cost--like raiding does--I would expect participation to diminish sharply. However, because the time cost is so low, I'm not sure what will happen. I do think the rating requirements will diminish enthusiasm for PvP, and satisfaction with the game. But that is hard to measure and hard to see, and whether that translate into diminished participation or subscriptions is an open question.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
New Security Dongle
According to Broken Toys (aka Scott Jennings/Lum the Mad), it looks like Blizzard is introducing a keychain security dongle called the Blizzard Authenticator.
It looks like an interesting option for anyone really worried about the security of the account, as it enables proper two-factor authentication. You will be able to purchase it from the Blizzard store for $6.50, which is a pretty reasonable price, in my opinion.
The only issue is that this is optional, and some of the people who would get the most use out of this will not hear about it or pick it up.
It will be interesting to see the effect of this Blizzard Authenticator on the game. For example, account sharing is rampant among the high end. But the people at the high end also have the most to lose to a hacked account, and are the mostly likely to purchase and use the Authenticator. And that may cut down on tactics like getting someone else to play your character in Arenas.
It might also have an effect on guilds. A lot of guilds are very concerned about security for the Guild Bank. I can see a guild requiring that all its members, or at least all the officers, purchase and use the Authenticator.
It's good to see that Blizzard has been taking security more seriously lately. They took my advice on disabling hyperlinks on the official forums, and are now introducing a good two-factor authentication system. However, I still think that the default game experience needs to be a little more secure.
It looks like an interesting option for anyone really worried about the security of the account, as it enables proper two-factor authentication. You will be able to purchase it from the Blizzard store for $6.50, which is a pretty reasonable price, in my opinion.
The only issue is that this is optional, and some of the people who would get the most use out of this will not hear about it or pick it up.
It will be interesting to see the effect of this Blizzard Authenticator on the game. For example, account sharing is rampant among the high end. But the people at the high end also have the most to lose to a hacked account, and are the mostly likely to purchase and use the Authenticator. And that may cut down on tactics like getting someone else to play your character in Arenas.
It might also have an effect on guilds. A lot of guilds are very concerned about security for the Guild Bank. I can see a guild requiring that all its members, or at least all the officers, purchase and use the Authenticator.
It's good to see that Blizzard has been taking security more seriously lately. They took my advice on disabling hyperlinks on the official forums, and are now introducing a good two-factor authentication system. However, I still think that the default game experience needs to be a little more secure.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Ask Coriel: Magic-Immune Mobs
Jupis asks:
A) Immunities are different than resistances. Spell penetration will not help against immunities.
B) In general, don't worry about it. These mobs don't hit hard enough to make it an issue. Your hunters, warriors, rogues, shamans can help tank these things. Just get everyone (including the mages/warlocks) in there whacking away with their weapons.
As well, you should use Seal of the Crusader when attacking the mobs. You still get threat from white damage, though not a whole lot. SotC will increase your white damage. Tab-target to hit different mobs. It should be enough threat to keep them off the healers.
Basically, no one should stand aside on these mobs. Just attack them with your physical attacks, focus fire, and they'll go down quickly.
Well,recently,I encountered a problem. I was MTing Karazhan,and we reached the room after Curator(Before Aran,where the Journal of Medivh quest is).I was terrified of the fact that the mobs there are magic immune,since as a Paladin tank,I can't generate threat with just physical power. Luckily enough,my druid Off Tank picked them up for me,and got the whole deal done,while I was standing aside,shamed that I could not have helped the group.
This leads to my question:
A) Are immunities same as resistances for mobs? Would spell penetration of any kind would help?
B)Although they don't hit hard,they still do hit.If I can't control agro,it means damage on DPS and healers,but all of our mages and warlocks couldn't do a think in that situation,for the very same reason.
How is this situation solved without a full physical team,or a non magic using tank?
A) Immunities are different than resistances. Spell penetration will not help against immunities.
B) In general, don't worry about it. These mobs don't hit hard enough to make it an issue. Your hunters, warriors, rogues, shamans can help tank these things. Just get everyone (including the mages/warlocks) in there whacking away with their weapons.
As well, you should use Seal of the Crusader when attacking the mobs. You still get threat from white damage, though not a whole lot. SotC will increase your white damage. Tab-target to hit different mobs. It should be enough threat to keep them off the healers.
Basically, no one should stand aside on these mobs. Just attack them with your physical attacks, focus fire, and they'll go down quickly.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Bosses, Tokens, Recipes, Crafting
There are many people who feel that the current model of loot distribution (primarily random drops) in raiding is flawed. They feel that players are at the mercy of random numbers, and that it is very easy to be unlucky and miss out on a specific piece of loot (Dragonspine Trophy, for example). The proposed solution is that we should move to a more tokenized model of loot, like how Tier gear is distributed.
There are also other people who feel that crafting is not utilized enough in the endgame. They feel that crafting is pointless, as you inevitably replace crafted gear with raid loot.
This raises an interesting idea (which to be honest, has probably been proposed before): What if all endgame loot was crafted?
The way I envision it working is that each tier would have 5 or so epic materials. Bosses would drop a couple recipes and about 3 different bind-on-pickup mats. Every player that killed the boss would get these materials. The recipes in each tier would only use the tier materials to create items. The last boss in each instance might drop a special material that was only used in a few really good recipes. Essentially, crafting materials become the tokens/Badges, and player crafters become the gear vendors.
This solves a few problems. It gets crafters more involved in the endgame. All your gear will get that <Made By X> tag, which I find neat. Crafters get to forge every piece of loot. It makes getting gear more fluid, as different bosses could drop the same components. You still need to progress, as certain materials might only be available on certain bosses. There's still an element of randomness in the recipe drops, but because you only need the first drop, the effect of that randomness is muted. Worst comes to worst, you can go outside the guild to find a crafter.
You'd have to play with the numbers necessary for each recipe to get a good rate at which people could gear up, but I'm sure it could be done.
Now there are some problems with this model. Immediate gratification is not present. You kill a boss, and you don't get loot immediately. You do get some new recipes, which might serve the immediate "oooh, that's neat" aspect of loot. Players would need to do a little more research into what's available when gearing up. You can't equip new gear right away, you have to obtain it out of raid. Though with gemming and enchanting requirements, this is pretty much standard unless it is a massive upgrade.
The bigger problem is that if the materials or the crafted gear is Bind-on-Equip, then that will drag raid drops into the economy. One of the big things about WoW is that the top end stuff is not buyable (most of the time), and generally has to be earned by the player participating in activities. If it was all Bind-on-Equip, then that might have negative effects on the game, with increased gold farming, buying, and selling. It would make your farming prowess a very large factor in how well you are geared. I don't think that is a good idea, and I'm pretty sure all the tanks and healers will concur.
In reality, item crafting in WoW is missing an action. Currently, you can:
1. Make a Bind-on-Pickup item for yourself.
2. Make a Bind-on-Equip item for anyone.
It would be really useful if there was a third option:
3. Make a Bind-on-Pickup item for someone else.
If you think about it, this is essentially what a NPC token vendor does. You give them a Bind-on-Pickup material component, and they give you a Bind-on-Pickup item. For this idea to work well, you really need to be able to replicate that same transaction with a player crafter.
Perhaps the solution is a crafting window, like the trade window. The buyer puts her materials (and fee/tip!) on her side, the crafter chooses the recipe on his side, hits the craft button, and the item is deposited in the buyer's inventory.
I think craftable raid gear is an interesting solution to the problem of unlucky raid drop distribution. We get the excitement of random drops in the recipes, while mitigating randomness because only the first recipe drop is important. We get the consistency of badges and tokens in the material drops. We get the variety of loot in that certain recipes or materials only drop from certain bosses. We make crafting an integral part of endgame without overpowering it. Pretty much get to kill two birds with one stone, as I see it.
There are also other people who feel that crafting is not utilized enough in the endgame. They feel that crafting is pointless, as you inevitably replace crafted gear with raid loot.
This raises an interesting idea (which to be honest, has probably been proposed before): What if all endgame loot was crafted?
The way I envision it working is that each tier would have 5 or so epic materials. Bosses would drop a couple recipes and about 3 different bind-on-pickup mats. Every player that killed the boss would get these materials. The recipes in each tier would only use the tier materials to create items. The last boss in each instance might drop a special material that was only used in a few really good recipes. Essentially, crafting materials become the tokens/Badges, and player crafters become the gear vendors.
This solves a few problems. It gets crafters more involved in the endgame. All your gear will get that <Made By X> tag, which I find neat. Crafters get to forge every piece of loot. It makes getting gear more fluid, as different bosses could drop the same components. You still need to progress, as certain materials might only be available on certain bosses. There's still an element of randomness in the recipe drops, but because you only need the first drop, the effect of that randomness is muted. Worst comes to worst, you can go outside the guild to find a crafter.
You'd have to play with the numbers necessary for each recipe to get a good rate at which people could gear up, but I'm sure it could be done.
Now there are some problems with this model. Immediate gratification is not present. You kill a boss, and you don't get loot immediately. You do get some new recipes, which might serve the immediate "oooh, that's neat" aspect of loot. Players would need to do a little more research into what's available when gearing up. You can't equip new gear right away, you have to obtain it out of raid. Though with gemming and enchanting requirements, this is pretty much standard unless it is a massive upgrade.
The bigger problem is that if the materials or the crafted gear is Bind-on-Equip, then that will drag raid drops into the economy. One of the big things about WoW is that the top end stuff is not buyable (most of the time), and generally has to be earned by the player participating in activities. If it was all Bind-on-Equip, then that might have negative effects on the game, with increased gold farming, buying, and selling. It would make your farming prowess a very large factor in how well you are geared. I don't think that is a good idea, and I'm pretty sure all the tanks and healers will concur.
In reality, item crafting in WoW is missing an action. Currently, you can:
1. Make a Bind-on-Pickup item for yourself.
2. Make a Bind-on-Equip item for anyone.
It would be really useful if there was a third option:
3. Make a Bind-on-Pickup item for someone else.
If you think about it, this is essentially what a NPC token vendor does. You give them a Bind-on-Pickup material component, and they give you a Bind-on-Pickup item. For this idea to work well, you really need to be able to replicate that same transaction with a player crafter.
Perhaps the solution is a crafting window, like the trade window. The buyer puts her materials (and fee/tip!) on her side, the crafter chooses the recipe on his side, hits the craft button, and the item is deposited in the buyer's inventory.
I think craftable raid gear is an interesting solution to the problem of unlucky raid drop distribution. We get the excitement of random drops in the recipes, while mitigating randomness because only the first recipe drop is important. We get the consistency of badges and tokens in the material drops. We get the variety of loot in that certain recipes or materials only drop from certain bosses. We make crafting an integral part of endgame without overpowering it. Pretty much get to kill two birds with one stone, as I see it.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Wow. I just finished Dreamfall, and I am in shock.
I regret buying this game. I regret the 10 dollars I spent on this game. I regret the hours I spent playing this game. I regret posting that it was "superb". I regret playing the first Longest Journey--even though I loved that game--because it caused me to purchase this one.
The ending was the biggest, most nihilistic, "F*ck You" to the player that I have ever seen. This was not tragedy, or cleverness, or an ending that was fated to be. It was the designer making the last few hours of the game one giant railroad. He took all the characters the player liked, and just stomped them into the ground. Kind of honestly, I am in awe at how far he went.
The Longest Journey had a bittersweet ending that was almost perfect. This was beyond bittersweet, beyond tragedy. The only word I can use to describe Dreamfall's ending is nihilistic.
Man, between Dreamfall and The Time Traveler's Wife, it's been a very depressing weekend.
I regret buying this game. I regret the 10 dollars I spent on this game. I regret the hours I spent playing this game. I regret posting that it was "superb". I regret playing the first Longest Journey--even though I loved that game--because it caused me to purchase this one.
The ending was the biggest, most nihilistic, "F*ck You" to the player that I have ever seen. This was not tragedy, or cleverness, or an ending that was fated to be. It was the designer making the last few hours of the game one giant railroad. He took all the characters the player liked, and just stomped them into the ground. Kind of honestly, I am in awe at how far he went.
The Longest Journey had a bittersweet ending that was almost perfect. This was beyond bittersweet, beyond tragedy. The only word I can use to describe Dreamfall's ending is nihilistic.
Man, between Dreamfall and The Time Traveler's Wife, it's been a very depressing weekend.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Weapon Speeds
One of the weird things about WoW melee combat is that you almost always want a slow weapon. There's only a few situations where a faster weapon is better. This is because a lot of abilities depend on "weapon damage" and slower weapons have a higher damage range than faster weapons with the same DPS. So given two weapons, you almost always want the slower weapon.
This seems odd to me. It seems like there should be some advantage to using a faster weapon, some trade-off that would make faster weapons better in some situations. You'd think that effects that have a chance of occurring on a hit--also called procs--would be lend themselves to fast weapons, but because Blizzard uses a Proc-Per-Minute system for most of these effects, there's no advantage to a fast weapon.
(A quick explanation of Proc-Per-Minute (PPM): The probability of proc happening is independent of the weapon speed. For example, Seal of Command will proc an average of 7 times a minute, regardless of how fast or slow your weapon is.)
The few times a fast weapon is desired usually occurs when one of these two trends is broken. For example, combat rogues desire fast off-hands because none of their regular abilities rely on off-hand weapon damage, and because Combat Potency returns energy on every swing (a non-PPM system).
I think it would be better if fast weapons had some innate advantage, to balance the extra damage that slow weapons give to your abilities. Right now, I think weapon speed makes a bit too much of a difference in the quality of weapons, and that makes several drops less desireable than they should be.
Note: Slam Warriors and Hunters don't adhere to the slow weapon rule. Because of the way their abilities interact with the weapon swing/shot timer, there's usually a specific "best" speed for them. The weapons still suffer from the same problem, in that a weapon can be much better or worse than others of the same DPS, just because it happens to have a specific speed.
This seems odd to me. It seems like there should be some advantage to using a faster weapon, some trade-off that would make faster weapons better in some situations. You'd think that effects that have a chance of occurring on a hit--also called procs--would be lend themselves to fast weapons, but because Blizzard uses a Proc-Per-Minute system for most of these effects, there's no advantage to a fast weapon.
(A quick explanation of Proc-Per-Minute (PPM): The probability of proc happening is independent of the weapon speed. For example, Seal of Command will proc an average of 7 times a minute, regardless of how fast or slow your weapon is.)
The few times a fast weapon is desired usually occurs when one of these two trends is broken. For example, combat rogues desire fast off-hands because none of their regular abilities rely on off-hand weapon damage, and because Combat Potency returns energy on every swing (a non-PPM system).
I think it would be better if fast weapons had some innate advantage, to balance the extra damage that slow weapons give to your abilities. Right now, I think weapon speed makes a bit too much of a difference in the quality of weapons, and that makes several drops less desireable than they should be.
Note: Slam Warriors and Hunters don't adhere to the slow weapon rule. Because of the way their abilities interact with the weapon swing/shot timer, there's usually a specific "best" speed for them. The weapons still suffer from the same problem, in that a weapon can be much better or worse than others of the same DPS, just because it happens to have a specific speed.
Network Traffic
A couple days ago, Tobold wrote a post on tiered pricing for Internet access, caused by the rise in BitTorrent traffic. Essential, he took the position that heavy users of the Internet, who transferred more data, should pay more than light users. The resulting firestorm caused him to delete the post and all the attached comments. It's sort of a pity he had to do that, as it is an interesting topic. It's not directly related to WoW, but as we play WoW over the Internet, how the Internet is structured is important to us. (Plus, I haven't written anything in a while, so here's some content.)
For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that all file-transfer or BitTorrent traffic is legal and does not infringe copyright. This isn't true, but I feel that moral arguments about copyright infringement are a distraction, and obscure the real issues at the heart of this problem.
A lot of people say that if a company says you have X amount of bandwidth, say 512 Kbs up/down, the company should allocate that amount for each customer, and not punish you for using the full amount. The problem with this view is that it is supremely wasteful. It's like you and your neighbour each having a private road from home to work. The vast majority of the time, both roads will be empty and just taking up space. A much better solution is a common road that everyone shares.
Network traffic is like cars on that road. The important part here is that an individual doesn't really care who else is on the road, so long as he can get from point A to point B in a fast and efficient manner. As more and more cars appear, the road becomes more congested, and it becomes harder to use the road to full effect. In the past, whenever this happened, ISPs would add more bandwidth to the system, essentially adding an extra lane to the road, spacing out the cars once again. (Unlike real roads, extra bandwidth is often the cheapest solution.)
So why don't ISPs just continue adding bandwidth? The answer lies in the nature of BitTorrent, which is the major protocol used to transfer files these days.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a very aggressive protocol. It basically uses all available bandwidth, saturating your connection. This is one of the reasons that downloading with BitTorrent is so fast. To go back to the road analogy, it's like the road was suddenly packed full of trucks, taking all the available space. If you're in your car, trying to get on the road to go to work, this is very frustrating. Adding bandwidth doesn't help in this case, because the BitTorrent trucks will immediately fill up the new lane.
Anyone who's tried to play WoW at the same time that several torrents are running understands this. WoW takes very little bandwidth. It's playable on a 56K modem. But add several torrents downloading in the background, and your WoW connection craters. God help you if you want to run Ventrilo as well.
There are essentially two solutions to this problem: a technical solution, and an economic solution. Like all solutions, neither one is perfect.
Technical Solution - Quality of Service
The technical solution is something called Quality of Service. Basically, each type of traffic has a priority, and higher priority traffic gets transmitted first, while lower priority traffic gets delayed until the network is free.
Using the road analogy, it's like the road is full of trucks, but as soon as you pull up to the entrance, a space automatically opens up for your car, and you get shifted into the fast lane immediately. It doesn't really matter that the rest of the road is filled with trucks, you get to your destination quickly.
My personal priority system would look something like this, from highest to lowest priority:
1. Game traffic (low size, needs high responsiveness)
2. Streaming audio/video (moderate size, needs high responsiveness)
3. General web (low size, moderate responsiveness)
4. Email (low size, low responsiveness)
5. File transfers (high size, low responsiveness)
People who want to transfer files via BitTorrent can still do so, but without interfering with other people's web experience. Quite honestly, there will be a large amount of bandwidth still usable for file transfers, especially at off-peak hours.
There are several issues with Quality of Service. It is a bit expensive to implement across the entire Internet. There needs to be common agreement on the priority scheme. The network neutrality fanatics will be upset. Some bright MBA will probably think it's a good idea to prioritize by source or destination, and charge for increasing your priority.
As well, this method will decrease the average speed of file transfers. I think the increased responsiveness of all the other types of traffic more than makes up for it. However, someone else will disagree, and make a file transfer client that pretends to be the highest priority. That will lead to an arms wars between ISPs and file-transferrers as the ISPs develop new methods (Deep Packet Inspection, etc.) to classify traffic, and file-transferrers try to fool those methods.
Economic Solution - Metered Pricing
The other solution is to charge people according to the bandwidth they use. This essentially causes people to decide what uses of the Internet are important to them, and implement their own priority. I suspect that most people will cut down on file transferring, and spend their money on web surfing and email.
This is a good solution because it's fairly easy to implement, very hard to evade, and will almost certainly work. It also maps to what people think is "fair": people who use the service the most pay the most, and people who use it least pay the least.
The problem with the economic solution is that there are a lot of interesting ideas or applications that rely on people having access to extra bandwidth at negligible cost. For example, if metered pricing had been the norm, I don't think things like podcasts or YouTube would exist. Similarly, digital distribution of games or movies would have very little chance of taking off. Downloading patches for games and software becomes expensive.
There are also a lot of implications for open source. To a large extent, open source software relies on being able to easily transmit changes and updates across the Internet. Metered access puts a significant cost on using and creating open source software, which would be a shame.
As well, metered pricing can provide a disincentive for the ISPs to improve their service and increase the bandwidth available. To a certain extent, this depends on the competition available, but many ISPs in the United States seem to operate in a quasi-monopoly fashion.
Conclusion
Network congestion caused by BitTorrent and other distributed file-transfer systems is a real problem. Trying to ignore it, or getting into unrelated arguments about copyright infringement, will not work.
My personal preference would be for the ISPs to implement a decent Quality of Service system (with WoW and other games at the top, naturally). However, I lack faith that the ISPs will remain source/destination neutral, and only prioritize on traffic type. I also lack faith in file-transferrers, and I am pretty sure that instead of accepting slightly-reduced file-transfer performance for better overall performance, they will trigger an arms war by attempting to fool the Quality of Service systems.
The Quality of Service solution essentially requires a degree of cooperation between all parties, and I don't think that's likely. So we will probably end up with some form of metered pricing.
For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that all file-transfer or BitTorrent traffic is legal and does not infringe copyright. This isn't true, but I feel that moral arguments about copyright infringement are a distraction, and obscure the real issues at the heart of this problem.
A lot of people say that if a company says you have X amount of bandwidth, say 512 Kbs up/down, the company should allocate that amount for each customer, and not punish you for using the full amount. The problem with this view is that it is supremely wasteful. It's like you and your neighbour each having a private road from home to work. The vast majority of the time, both roads will be empty and just taking up space. A much better solution is a common road that everyone shares.
Network traffic is like cars on that road. The important part here is that an individual doesn't really care who else is on the road, so long as he can get from point A to point B in a fast and efficient manner. As more and more cars appear, the road becomes more congested, and it becomes harder to use the road to full effect. In the past, whenever this happened, ISPs would add more bandwidth to the system, essentially adding an extra lane to the road, spacing out the cars once again. (Unlike real roads, extra bandwidth is often the cheapest solution.)
So why don't ISPs just continue adding bandwidth? The answer lies in the nature of BitTorrent, which is the major protocol used to transfer files these days.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a very aggressive protocol. It basically uses all available bandwidth, saturating your connection. This is one of the reasons that downloading with BitTorrent is so fast. To go back to the road analogy, it's like the road was suddenly packed full of trucks, taking all the available space. If you're in your car, trying to get on the road to go to work, this is very frustrating. Adding bandwidth doesn't help in this case, because the BitTorrent trucks will immediately fill up the new lane.
Anyone who's tried to play WoW at the same time that several torrents are running understands this. WoW takes very little bandwidth. It's playable on a 56K modem. But add several torrents downloading in the background, and your WoW connection craters. God help you if you want to run Ventrilo as well.
There are essentially two solutions to this problem: a technical solution, and an economic solution. Like all solutions, neither one is perfect.
Technical Solution - Quality of Service
The technical solution is something called Quality of Service. Basically, each type of traffic has a priority, and higher priority traffic gets transmitted first, while lower priority traffic gets delayed until the network is free.
Using the road analogy, it's like the road is full of trucks, but as soon as you pull up to the entrance, a space automatically opens up for your car, and you get shifted into the fast lane immediately. It doesn't really matter that the rest of the road is filled with trucks, you get to your destination quickly.
My personal priority system would look something like this, from highest to lowest priority:
1. Game traffic (low size, needs high responsiveness)
2. Streaming audio/video (moderate size, needs high responsiveness)
3. General web (low size, moderate responsiveness)
4. Email (low size, low responsiveness)
5. File transfers (high size, low responsiveness)
People who want to transfer files via BitTorrent can still do so, but without interfering with other people's web experience. Quite honestly, there will be a large amount of bandwidth still usable for file transfers, especially at off-peak hours.
There are several issues with Quality of Service. It is a bit expensive to implement across the entire Internet. There needs to be common agreement on the priority scheme. The network neutrality fanatics will be upset. Some bright MBA will probably think it's a good idea to prioritize by source or destination, and charge for increasing your priority.
As well, this method will decrease the average speed of file transfers. I think the increased responsiveness of all the other types of traffic more than makes up for it. However, someone else will disagree, and make a file transfer client that pretends to be the highest priority. That will lead to an arms wars between ISPs and file-transferrers as the ISPs develop new methods (Deep Packet Inspection, etc.) to classify traffic, and file-transferrers try to fool those methods.
Economic Solution - Metered Pricing
The other solution is to charge people according to the bandwidth they use. This essentially causes people to decide what uses of the Internet are important to them, and implement their own priority. I suspect that most people will cut down on file transferring, and spend their money on web surfing and email.
This is a good solution because it's fairly easy to implement, very hard to evade, and will almost certainly work. It also maps to what people think is "fair": people who use the service the most pay the most, and people who use it least pay the least.
The problem with the economic solution is that there are a lot of interesting ideas or applications that rely on people having access to extra bandwidth at negligible cost. For example, if metered pricing had been the norm, I don't think things like podcasts or YouTube would exist. Similarly, digital distribution of games or movies would have very little chance of taking off. Downloading patches for games and software becomes expensive.
There are also a lot of implications for open source. To a large extent, open source software relies on being able to easily transmit changes and updates across the Internet. Metered access puts a significant cost on using and creating open source software, which would be a shame.
As well, metered pricing can provide a disincentive for the ISPs to improve their service and increase the bandwidth available. To a certain extent, this depends on the competition available, but many ISPs in the United States seem to operate in a quasi-monopoly fashion.
Conclusion
Network congestion caused by BitTorrent and other distributed file-transfer systems is a real problem. Trying to ignore it, or getting into unrelated arguments about copyright infringement, will not work.
My personal preference would be for the ISPs to implement a decent Quality of Service system (with WoW and other games at the top, naturally). However, I lack faith that the ISPs will remain source/destination neutral, and only prioritize on traffic type. I also lack faith in file-transferrers, and I am pretty sure that instead of accepting slightly-reduced file-transfer performance for better overall performance, they will trigger an arms war by attempting to fool the Quality of Service systems.
The Quality of Service solution essentially requires a degree of cooperation between all parties, and I don't think that's likely. So we will probably end up with some form of metered pricing.
Friday, June 13, 2008
L70ETC Music Video Contest
Blizzard's latest Music Video contest is over, and the winners can be seen here.
I sort of wish that Blizzard had used the same format as the 2007 Music Video contest (with the Ataris). I like L70 Elite Tauren Chieftain, and I'm not really a fan of the Ataris, but the 2007 contest produced much more interesting videos.
In particular, the song chosen in 2008 was a WoW-specific song about rogues, and the L70ETC models exist in the game. So we basically ended up with clips of L70ETC interspersed with Rogues doing roguey stuff. All the videos were very similar in content.
In contrast the Ataris' songs were much more abstract, not related to WoW at all, which required the filmmakers to do some interpretation. This lead to a wide variety of videos, which were much more interesting to watch.
I sort of wish that Blizzard had used the same format as the 2007 Music Video contest (with the Ataris). I like L70 Elite Tauren Chieftain, and I'm not really a fan of the Ataris, but the 2007 contest produced much more interesting videos.
In particular, the song chosen in 2008 was a WoW-specific song about rogues, and the L70ETC models exist in the game. So we basically ended up with clips of L70ETC interspersed with Rogues doing roguey stuff. All the videos were very similar in content.
In contrast the Ataris' songs were much more abstract, not related to WoW at all, which required the filmmakers to do some interpretation. This lead to a wide variety of videos, which were much more interesting to watch.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Choice in Deus Ex: Invisible War
I mentioned Deus Ex: Invisible War in my last post. Invisible War is an interesting game. A lot of reviews panned it as being worse than the first Deus Ex, but I thought it was actually a superior game.
The thing is that where the first Deus Ex made choices obvious--usually through RPG elements like skills--Invisible War stripped out all extraneous choices, and built them into the gameplay itself. You could handle almost every situation multiple ways. But you never really saw all the different possibilities, because your first plan, your chosen playstyle, would usually work, and you never had to consider playing the game differently. If you approach every problem from the stealth perspective, you see the stealth solution first, and don't even consider the "guns blazing" option.
From a game design point-of-view this is very clean work, to build multiple solutions for every problem with such elegance. But the player ends up only seeing one facet of the game. RPG elements make the different paths obvious. If I can assign points to certain skills, I am chosing to *not* assign points to other skills. If the player never even thinks of using a rocket launcher, does the rocket launcher exist?
I suspect that Deus Ex: Invisible War would have gotten a lot higher ratings if two different reviewers had sat down and compared their experiences, and realized that they may have approached the game in two completely different styles and yet each style worked perfectly and seamlessly.
The lesson that Deus Ex: Invisible War taught me is that if you want people to appreciate their choice, you have to make obvious the fact that that there was a choice. People need to not only see what they are choosing, but also what they giving up.
The thing is that where the first Deus Ex made choices obvious--usually through RPG elements like skills--Invisible War stripped out all extraneous choices, and built them into the gameplay itself. You could handle almost every situation multiple ways. But you never really saw all the different possibilities, because your first plan, your chosen playstyle, would usually work, and you never had to consider playing the game differently. If you approach every problem from the stealth perspective, you see the stealth solution first, and don't even consider the "guns blazing" option.
From a game design point-of-view this is very clean work, to build multiple solutions for every problem with such elegance. But the player ends up only seeing one facet of the game. RPG elements make the different paths obvious. If I can assign points to certain skills, I am chosing to *not* assign points to other skills. If the player never even thinks of using a rocket launcher, does the rocket launcher exist?
I suspect that Deus Ex: Invisible War would have gotten a lot higher ratings if two different reviewers had sat down and compared their experiences, and realized that they may have approached the game in two completely different styles and yet each style worked perfectly and seamlessly.
The lesson that Deus Ex: Invisible War taught me is that if you want people to appreciate their choice, you have to make obvious the fact that that there was a choice. People need to not only see what they are choosing, but also what they giving up.
Old and New Graphics
As I've said before, I wasn't all that impressed with the graphics in Age of Conan. Therefore, I was relatively surprised that I really, really like the look of Dreamfall, which is an older adventure game made by Funcom.[1]
Of course, Dreamfall has a number of advantages over Age of Conan. It's a single-player game with few models on screen and smaller locations. It also uses bright colours, and has that vibrant look that I enjoy.
However, I think a bigger factor may be that Dreamfall is an older game, published a couple years ago. My system is fairly new, and so I can crank all the video settings to maximum. In Age of Conan, I can't push the settings all the way up, and have to settle for medium quality.
It begs the question: is 100% of older graphics better than 50% of newer graphics? Maybe one reason I preferred WoW's graphics is that I can run the older graphics at near-maximum, and that provides a better experience than newer graphics at medium.
I had a similar reaction a while ago, when I played Deus Ex: Invisible War. I played it a couple of years after it was published, and on newer hardware. Again, I was able to crank the graphics to maximum, and I thought it was a really good looking game.
Maybe it's harder to get all the different elements of a graphics system working together perfectly at the mushy middle quality. Maybe the contrast between quality of different elements is a factor. I mentioned that I was very impressed with Conan's water. Did the quality of water diminish how I viewed the avatar graphics? Would it have been better if the water quality was intentionally degraded to match the other graphics settings? Would that have provided a better overall experience?
I'm not sure, and I'm not really into computer graphics. I just found the difference in my visual reaction to two Funcom games to be interesting.
[1] As an aside, Dreamfall and its predecessor The Longest Journey are superb adventure games. I'm still working on Dreamfall, so please don't post any spoilers.
Of course, Dreamfall has a number of advantages over Age of Conan. It's a single-player game with few models on screen and smaller locations. It also uses bright colours, and has that vibrant look that I enjoy.
However, I think a bigger factor may be that Dreamfall is an older game, published a couple years ago. My system is fairly new, and so I can crank all the video settings to maximum. In Age of Conan, I can't push the settings all the way up, and have to settle for medium quality.
It begs the question: is 100% of older graphics better than 50% of newer graphics? Maybe one reason I preferred WoW's graphics is that I can run the older graphics at near-maximum, and that provides a better experience than newer graphics at medium.
I had a similar reaction a while ago, when I played Deus Ex: Invisible War. I played it a couple of years after it was published, and on newer hardware. Again, I was able to crank the graphics to maximum, and I thought it was a really good looking game.
Maybe it's harder to get all the different elements of a graphics system working together perfectly at the mushy middle quality. Maybe the contrast between quality of different elements is a factor. I mentioned that I was very impressed with Conan's water. Did the quality of water diminish how I viewed the avatar graphics? Would it have been better if the water quality was intentionally degraded to match the other graphics settings? Would that have provided a better overall experience?
I'm not sure, and I'm not really into computer graphics. I just found the difference in my visual reaction to two Funcom games to be interesting.
[1] As an aside, Dreamfall and its predecessor The Longest Journey are superb adventure games. I'm still working on Dreamfall, so please don't post any spoilers.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Heroes, not Tourists
I generally like Mount Hyjal. The setup is very different from a normal raid instance, with the trash waves, NPC allies, and bosses that come to you instead of you finding them.
However, one big negative for Mount Hyjal is that there is no purpose to the heroes being there. Unlike the previous Caverns of Time instances, where the Infinite Dragonflight is trying to alter history, pretty much everything seems to happen as it is supposed to. The raid isn't a band of heroes, they're a group of tourists.
I don't demand much from the lore in this game, but there's usually a mission behind our ventures into the various raid instances. Mount Hyjal seems to lack any purpose. It feels like Blizzard thought, "You know what was a cool mission/event in Warcraft III? Mount Hyjal! Let's allow players to revisit it." Playing tourist, rather than doing something heroic.
The Infinite Dragonflight are also superb villains. Mysterious dragons, with that awesome reverb effect for their voices. Epoch Hunter's reveal in Durnholde was an epic moment. Aoenus in the Black Morass made a really good argument for preventing Medivh from opening the Dark Portal. In many ways, the Infinite Dragonflight are the best villains in The Burning Crusade, and it was a real disappointment that they did not appear in Mount Hyjal.
The reason I'm writing about this now is that Blizzard is talking about the new Caverns of Time instance coming in Wrath of the Lich King, the Culling of Stratholme. And the manner in which they are talking about it seems to be emphasising the tourist aspect heavily, "The Culling of Stratholme was a cool mission in WC3. Let's have the players go play tourist with Arthas."
New CoT instances are a great idea. They're fun and often unique. But they need to be along the lines of Durholde and Black Morass, giving the players a heroic purpose, rather than Mount Hyjal, where the raid is just a gaggle of tourists.
Also, bring back the Infinite Dragonflight please.
However, one big negative for Mount Hyjal is that there is no purpose to the heroes being there. Unlike the previous Caverns of Time instances, where the Infinite Dragonflight is trying to alter history, pretty much everything seems to happen as it is supposed to. The raid isn't a band of heroes, they're a group of tourists.
I don't demand much from the lore in this game, but there's usually a mission behind our ventures into the various raid instances. Mount Hyjal seems to lack any purpose. It feels like Blizzard thought, "You know what was a cool mission/event in Warcraft III? Mount Hyjal! Let's allow players to revisit it." Playing tourist, rather than doing something heroic.
The Infinite Dragonflight are also superb villains. Mysterious dragons, with that awesome reverb effect for their voices. Epoch Hunter's reveal in Durnholde was an epic moment. Aoenus in the Black Morass made a really good argument for preventing Medivh from opening the Dark Portal. In many ways, the Infinite Dragonflight are the best villains in The Burning Crusade, and it was a real disappointment that they did not appear in Mount Hyjal.
The reason I'm writing about this now is that Blizzard is talking about the new Caverns of Time instance coming in Wrath of the Lich King, the Culling of Stratholme. And the manner in which they are talking about it seems to be emphasising the tourist aspect heavily, "The Culling of Stratholme was a cool mission in WC3. Let's have the players go play tourist with Arthas."
New CoT instances are a great idea. They're fun and often unique. But they need to be along the lines of Durholde and Black Morass, giving the players a heroic purpose, rather than Mount Hyjal, where the raid is just a gaggle of tourists.
Also, bring back the Infinite Dragonflight please.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Being On The Path
Note: Sadly, because this post deals with the Season 4 PvP Ratings Requirement, I have the feeling that the comments will devolve into PvP vs PvE and miss my larger point.
The majority of Season 4 PvP gear will require the purchaser to have a personal rating of 1550 or higher. Even some of the gear obtainable through Battlegrounds will require Arena ratings. Many people, who thought PvP gear was too easily obtained for its quality, are happy about this, and many casual PvPers are unhappy.
It may surprise some of you--because I am in the camp which felt PvP gear was too easily obtained--but I believe that Rating Requirements are a bad idea.
The key is the concept of "Being On The Path" for endgame content. In nutshell, the number of people who reach the highest point of endgame is less important than the number of people who are working towards--and feel that they one day could achieve--that point.
For example, in PvE, the number of guilds in Sunwell does not matter. What really matters is the number of guilds who make it to Gruul and Magtheridon. Once a guild reaches Gruul and Magtheridon, they are "on the path" to Sunwell. Most of these guilds probably won't reach Sunwell before WotLK, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that they are steadily working on content, and feel that they could reach Sunwell eventually.
As long as a player is "on the path", everything is fine. The real crisis point are when people are unable to get on the path, or their progress on the path becomes completely blocked. I think it is less important to cater to the raiding guilds, and more important to help the guilds who are trying to become raiding guilds. To help the people who cannot get on the path at all.
This is why I feel Rating Requirements for Season 4 are a bad idea. If you are a casual PvPer, one who tries, but isn't really all that good, you've basically fallen off the path. And that is demoralizing.
In reality, of course, a casual PvPer is not likely to earn all the pieces of S4 before WotLK. But again, what is likely is not as important as what is possible. As long as you are on the path towards the end, that is the critical element.
If you look back at the last time I posted about PvP rewards, notice that I never outright denied a reward to a player. My suggestions made the process longer, but so long as a player kept at it, they would stay on the path towards Season 4.
The number of players who achieve the end is less important than the number of players who are on the path to the end. The number of players in Sunwell is less important than the number of players on the path to Sunwell. The number of players in Season 4 gear is less important than the number of players working towards Season 4 gear. With the advent of extensive Rating Requirements, the number of players on the path to Season 4 gear will drop drastically, and that is an unhealthy state for the PvP endgame.
The majority of Season 4 PvP gear will require the purchaser to have a personal rating of 1550 or higher. Even some of the gear obtainable through Battlegrounds will require Arena ratings. Many people, who thought PvP gear was too easily obtained for its quality, are happy about this, and many casual PvPers are unhappy.
It may surprise some of you--because I am in the camp which felt PvP gear was too easily obtained--but I believe that Rating Requirements are a bad idea.
The key is the concept of "Being On The Path" for endgame content. In nutshell, the number of people who reach the highest point of endgame is less important than the number of people who are working towards--and feel that they one day could achieve--that point.
For example, in PvE, the number of guilds in Sunwell does not matter. What really matters is the number of guilds who make it to Gruul and Magtheridon. Once a guild reaches Gruul and Magtheridon, they are "on the path" to Sunwell. Most of these guilds probably won't reach Sunwell before WotLK, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that they are steadily working on content, and feel that they could reach Sunwell eventually.
As long as a player is "on the path", everything is fine. The real crisis point are when people are unable to get on the path, or their progress on the path becomes completely blocked. I think it is less important to cater to the raiding guilds, and more important to help the guilds who are trying to become raiding guilds. To help the people who cannot get on the path at all.
This is why I feel Rating Requirements for Season 4 are a bad idea. If you are a casual PvPer, one who tries, but isn't really all that good, you've basically fallen off the path. And that is demoralizing.
In reality, of course, a casual PvPer is not likely to earn all the pieces of S4 before WotLK. But again, what is likely is not as important as what is possible. As long as you are on the path towards the end, that is the critical element.
If you look back at the last time I posted about PvP rewards, notice that I never outright denied a reward to a player. My suggestions made the process longer, but so long as a player kept at it, they would stay on the path towards Season 4.
The number of players who achieve the end is less important than the number of players who are on the path to the end. The number of players in Sunwell is less important than the number of players on the path to Sunwell. The number of players in Season 4 gear is less important than the number of players working towards Season 4 gear. With the advent of extensive Rating Requirements, the number of players on the path to Season 4 gear will drop drastically, and that is an unhealthy state for the PvP endgame.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Thoughts on Raid Schedules
I've noticed that there are very few 25-man raiding guilds that only raid for one or two days. There's probably a significant portion of the audience that would be happy in this type of guild, and it seems a little bit unusual that these guilds are so rare. I think that there are two reasons for the lack of 1 or 2-day raiding guilds: the nature of guild leaders; and the pressure to do more.
Guild leaders, by their very nature, tend to be a little more hardcore than normal. After all, starting and running a guild is a great deal of work and effort. As well, they tend to play a fair bit. People who are only online one or two evenings generally feel that they aren't able to devote enough time to the guild.
Because guild leaders play so much, they tend to shape the guild so that it matches their schedules. If they want to raid four days a week, that's what the guild works toward.
The other reason is that there is a constant pressure on a guild to do more. Every extra day you can add to the schedule makes you better off. An extra day of farming, or an extra day of boss attempts, sounds enormously appealing. A lot of times I've seen a guild start with small raid schedule, and then realize that, hey, if we add another raid day, we could farm Kara for badges, or have two days for boss attempts, and their raid schedule balloons.
Lately, I'm coming to the opinion that a non-hardcore raiding guild should ideally raid one less day than it is fully capable of. For example, if your guild absolutely cannot raid for five days, but you can for four, I think you should raid three days of the week. Having that extra slack can go a long ways towards combating fatigue and burnout.
I think the next major innovation in MMO game design will be an pressure or force that compels you to do less, and is one which is willing accepted by the player base. For example, you could always brute-force it, and say that you can only ever be saved to one raid instance at a time, but the player base would howl. I have no idea what this force could be, but I believe it will be key to the success of the MMO that dethrones WoW.
Guild leaders, by their very nature, tend to be a little more hardcore than normal. After all, starting and running a guild is a great deal of work and effort. As well, they tend to play a fair bit. People who are only online one or two evenings generally feel that they aren't able to devote enough time to the guild.
Because guild leaders play so much, they tend to shape the guild so that it matches their schedules. If they want to raid four days a week, that's what the guild works toward.
The other reason is that there is a constant pressure on a guild to do more. Every extra day you can add to the schedule makes you better off. An extra day of farming, or an extra day of boss attempts, sounds enormously appealing. A lot of times I've seen a guild start with small raid schedule, and then realize that, hey, if we add another raid day, we could farm Kara for badges, or have two days for boss attempts, and their raid schedule balloons.
Lately, I'm coming to the opinion that a non-hardcore raiding guild should ideally raid one less day than it is fully capable of. For example, if your guild absolutely cannot raid for five days, but you can for four, I think you should raid three days of the week. Having that extra slack can go a long ways towards combating fatigue and burnout.
I think the next major innovation in MMO game design will be an pressure or force that compels you to do less, and is one which is willing accepted by the player base. For example, you could always brute-force it, and say that you can only ever be saved to one raid instance at a time, but the player base would howl. I have no idea what this force could be, but I believe it will be key to the success of the MMO that dethrones WoW.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Fun and Raiding Video
Theoretically, this is still a WoW blog, so I may as well make a WoW post.
Apropos of our discussion on raiding and fun, comes this video of a Kil'jaeden attempt by <V A N Q U I S H>:
I like this video, because often raiding is a "quiet" sort of fun (except when a boss dies and Vent breaks out in cheers). You need to keep quiet in order to make sure that the raid leader can be heard. The surprise and outright delight in this raider's voice at the end is something that we all feel, but often don't give voice to, and thus is not really communicated to non-raiders.
It's sort of appropriate that this comes from a very hardcore guild, on the last encounter of the last raid in the game. It is heartening to see that even at that level, raiders still have fun.
Apropos of our discussion on raiding and fun, comes this video of a Kil'jaeden attempt by <V A N Q U I S H>:
I like this video, because often raiding is a "quiet" sort of fun (except when a boss dies and Vent breaks out in cheers). You need to keep quiet in order to make sure that the raid leader can be heard. The surprise and outright delight in this raider's voice at the end is something that we all feel, but often don't give voice to, and thus is not really communicated to non-raiders.
It's sort of appropriate that this comes from a very hardcore guild, on the last encounter of the last raid in the game. It is heartening to see that even at that level, raiders still have fun.
Age of Conan: Odds and Ends
Tharok has challenged me to note some things that Age of Conan does better than WoW. I'm going to try to do so.
*crickets*
Umm, the water is really, really pretty. Seriously, the reflection, refraction, and diffraction is superb. Simply putting my toon in the water ups the graphics quality by an order of magnitude.
The use of positional effects such as knockbacks is very nice. My Priest of Mitra got this spell Repulse, which flings all enemies close to you backwards, and does a fair bit of damage. It's a lot of fun to use, and is a great spell for a priest type character.
The melee combat is more reactive than WoW's combat. Where WoW tends to fall into set routine, AoC combat tends to make you push buttons in a unique order each time.
Quests are a lot easier to do as quest objectives are marked on your map, so you can just follow the arrows.
I think the LFG system is better, but I haven't actually used it yet.
Well, that's done, and I can go back to pointing silly design design decisions. This is just going to be a quick list of stuff, not really in any significant detail.
Melee Combat. I personally find melee combat to be awkward, and not really that deep. Hit the guy on the side with no shields is not the height of strategy. Maybe it will get better if you can start identifying when a combo has been started and what moves are coming up.
Death Penalties. When you die, you essentially "respawn" at a graveyard. You have a penalty to your stats, which will go away if you reach the spot where you died (or after 30 minutes). Of course, if you die far away from a respawn point you have to run all the way back to your body, and there are normally respawned mobs in the way. So you have to kill these mobs all over again, only this time it's harder because of the penalty.
Quest tracking. As far as I can tell, you can only track one quest at a time. However, if you pick up a new quest, the tracking automatically switches to the new quest. So what ends up happening is that I'm following the arrow to a quest item and I see someone who has a new quest. I pick up the quest, look at the mini-map to find my bearings, and realize that I have to open the quest log and re-select the old quest I was working on. This behaviour is supremely annoying.
Chat Window. Here's the general rule of chat windows: Chat windows are for communicating with other players, the rest of the interface is for communicating with the game. 9 times out of 10, the player does not need to see an actual message from the game if the UI has been designed properly. AoC shows too many messages. As well, by default you can only see 3 or so lines in the window. The worst is when you sell loot after adventuring, and every transaction is posted. I'm not really sure it's even possible to carry on a conversation while doing something using the default chat.
Instancing. AoC doesn't really feel like a world. It feels like a collection of instances strung together. The instancing tech to balance loads and over-crowding is quite clever, but I'm not sure it was a good idea. I quite clearly remember my first griffon flight in WoW, and realizing that I could see other people and they could see me, that I was still part of the world. That was amazingly cool. In fact, I think Blizzard's decision to instance off the Blood Elf and Draenai starting areas was a mistake, and AoC is making that same mistake on a far larger scale.
Balanced areas. I was doing a green (low-level) quest that involved killing level 5 monsters at about level 8. However, to get to the correct area I had to get past a level 11 monster that killed me every time. I finally waited for a higher level to come by and kill it, and followed him through.
Graphics. I don't really like the graphics. Technically, they may be better than WoW (more polygons, more insert-CG-buzzword-here, etc.), but I find that Blizzard makes much better use of colours, contrast, and shapes. But I'm not really a fan of "realistic" graphics. I find that games that go for realism are not as "vibrant" as real life, and that more cartoony games are more likely to achieve that vibrancy. Your personal taste may differ.
Inability to switch characters. If you want to switch to a different character, you get to exit from the game and log back in again. I cannot fathom how Funcom decided this was a good idea.
Company logos. Yes, Funcom, when I start your game, I really want to see all 100 logos of every single company that had a hand in the game, including the pizza shop down the street, as well as the opening movie. Seriously, every time you launch the game, you get to sit through all the opening movies (or more accurately, hit Esc a whole bunch of times). Please, for the love of all that is holy, gaming companies need to stop doing this! Play all the movies whenever you make a new character, or the first time the game launches, but after that let us get to the actual game ASAP!
This isn't a negative for Funcom, but something that would have been really cool is if they had provided a set of "WoW default keybindings". Basically press L to bring up the Journal, B to bring up the inventory, C to bring up the character screen, P to bring up the Abilities/Skills and N to bring up the Feat trees. Just to make it slightly easier to steal WoW players. Similar to what Excel did to capture Lotus 1-2-3 users, by implementing all the Lotus "slash" commands.
All in all, AoC hasn't really grabbed me yet. There hasn't been anything that has really made me excited to play, and there are enough annoyances to make me not want to play. Admittedly, I haven't levelled very far yet, my highest character is my Priest of Mitra at about level 11. However, I have put in several hours on a bunch of different characters trying to find one that I liked. I predict that I will probably try to get my Priest through the starting area over the weekend, just to get my money's worth out of the game, and then probably stop playing it.
*crickets*
Umm, the water is really, really pretty. Seriously, the reflection, refraction, and diffraction is superb. Simply putting my toon in the water ups the graphics quality by an order of magnitude.
The use of positional effects such as knockbacks is very nice. My Priest of Mitra got this spell Repulse, which flings all enemies close to you backwards, and does a fair bit of damage. It's a lot of fun to use, and is a great spell for a priest type character.
The melee combat is more reactive than WoW's combat. Where WoW tends to fall into set routine, AoC combat tends to make you push buttons in a unique order each time.
Quests are a lot easier to do as quest objectives are marked on your map, so you can just follow the arrows.
I think the LFG system is better, but I haven't actually used it yet.
Well, that's done, and I can go back to pointing silly design design decisions. This is just going to be a quick list of stuff, not really in any significant detail.
Melee Combat. I personally find melee combat to be awkward, and not really that deep. Hit the guy on the side with no shields is not the height of strategy. Maybe it will get better if you can start identifying when a combo has been started and what moves are coming up.
Death Penalties. When you die, you essentially "respawn" at a graveyard. You have a penalty to your stats, which will go away if you reach the spot where you died (or after 30 minutes). Of course, if you die far away from a respawn point you have to run all the way back to your body, and there are normally respawned mobs in the way. So you have to kill these mobs all over again, only this time it's harder because of the penalty.
Quest tracking. As far as I can tell, you can only track one quest at a time. However, if you pick up a new quest, the tracking automatically switches to the new quest. So what ends up happening is that I'm following the arrow to a quest item and I see someone who has a new quest. I pick up the quest, look at the mini-map to find my bearings, and realize that I have to open the quest log and re-select the old quest I was working on. This behaviour is supremely annoying.
Chat Window. Here's the general rule of chat windows: Chat windows are for communicating with other players, the rest of the interface is for communicating with the game. 9 times out of 10, the player does not need to see an actual message from the game if the UI has been designed properly. AoC shows too many messages. As well, by default you can only see 3 or so lines in the window. The worst is when you sell loot after adventuring, and every transaction is posted. I'm not really sure it's even possible to carry on a conversation while doing something using the default chat.
Instancing. AoC doesn't really feel like a world. It feels like a collection of instances strung together. The instancing tech to balance loads and over-crowding is quite clever, but I'm not sure it was a good idea. I quite clearly remember my first griffon flight in WoW, and realizing that I could see other people and they could see me, that I was still part of the world. That was amazingly cool. In fact, I think Blizzard's decision to instance off the Blood Elf and Draenai starting areas was a mistake, and AoC is making that same mistake on a far larger scale.
Balanced areas. I was doing a green (low-level) quest that involved killing level 5 monsters at about level 8. However, to get to the correct area I had to get past a level 11 monster that killed me every time. I finally waited for a higher level to come by and kill it, and followed him through.
Graphics. I don't really like the graphics. Technically, they may be better than WoW (more polygons, more insert-CG-buzzword-here, etc.), but I find that Blizzard makes much better use of colours, contrast, and shapes. But I'm not really a fan of "realistic" graphics. I find that games that go for realism are not as "vibrant" as real life, and that more cartoony games are more likely to achieve that vibrancy. Your personal taste may differ.
Inability to switch characters. If you want to switch to a different character, you get to exit from the game and log back in again. I cannot fathom how Funcom decided this was a good idea.
Company logos. Yes, Funcom, when I start your game, I really want to see all 100 logos of every single company that had a hand in the game, including the pizza shop down the street, as well as the opening movie. Seriously, every time you launch the game, you get to sit through all the opening movies (or more accurately, hit Esc a whole bunch of times). Please, for the love of all that is holy, gaming companies need to stop doing this! Play all the movies whenever you make a new character, or the first time the game launches, but after that let us get to the actual game ASAP!
This isn't a negative for Funcom, but something that would have been really cool is if they had provided a set of "WoW default keybindings". Basically press L to bring up the Journal, B to bring up the inventory, C to bring up the character screen, P to bring up the Abilities/Skills and N to bring up the Feat trees. Just to make it slightly easier to steal WoW players. Similar to what Excel did to capture Lotus 1-2-3 users, by implementing all the Lotus "slash" commands.
All in all, AoC hasn't really grabbed me yet. There hasn't been anything that has really made me excited to play, and there are enough annoyances to make me not want to play. Admittedly, I haven't levelled very far yet, my highest character is my Priest of Mitra at about level 11. However, I have put in several hours on a bunch of different characters trying to find one that I liked. I predict that I will probably try to get my Priest through the starting area over the weekend, just to get my money's worth out of the game, and then probably stop playing it.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Age of Conan: Melee Combat
Melee combat is the big selling point of Age of Conan. I find it fun and visceral in some ways, but also rather awkward.
Basically, there is no auto-attack. Combat is more like a console game, where you have three basic attacks (left, middle, right). Your enemy has three shields which they shift around. So basically, you try and hit them where they've left openings in their defenses.
This system is all well and good. Combat is bloody and fluid, and pretty fun with just the three basic attacks.
My problem comes with special abilities, called combos. To start a special attack, you press the hotkey for that attack, and then a specific sequence of basic attacks. That executes the attack.
For some reason, I find this really awkward on a keyboard. My basic attacks are bound to 1, 2, 3. I can use special attacks bound to 4 and 5 fairly easily. However, hitting specials bound to the other number keys causes me trouble. I generally have to take my fingers off the basic attacks in order to reach the specials, and that makes it hard for me to complete the specials, as I have to get my little, ring, and middle fingers back in place. I've been experimenting with using my other hand or the mouse to trigger specials, but then I can't use that hand to control movement. WTB one more hand!
Essentially, the basic attacks take up too much of "key space" accessible to one hand, at least with the default keybindings. I might be able to do something by remapping those keys to the middle of the keyboard. But right now I find that I'm skipping most of the combos and just hitting the basic attack buttons.
A very annoying note is that if you play an archer, your bound specials bar doesn't change when you switch weapons. If switching to a bow automatically swapped the specials available, it would be much easier. It's not so bad on a WoW hunter, as you can put range on one side, and melee on the other. The problem in AoC is that you use 1-3 in both situations. So it's like 1-6 for range, and 1-3 + 7-9 for melee.
It strikes me that this system would work superbly on a console controller or gamepad. You'd use your thumb to hit the basic attack buttons, and you could queue up specials using the right shoulder pad buttons.
Though to be honest, if I had designed this system I would have designed it differently. I would have allowed the player to replace the basic attacks with new attacks, but still keep the whole directional combat with the shields. For example, if you got a Poisoned Strike, you could replace your Middle Basic attack an Middle Poisoned Strike. Then whenever you made an middle attack, you would make a poisoned strike. (You could bind the same Strike to multiple directions.)
If you combined this with abilities that had cooldowns, it would get pretty interesting. If you have a Haymaker with a 10s cooldown on your Right attack, you'd make attacks to draw shields away from the right side, then Haymaker the opponent for a ton of damage. But now you can't use your Right attack for 10s, and a smart opponent can balance shields to protect the Middle and Left sides.
It would keep the twitch and visceral nature of combat. You could still have combos, but now the components of the combo could change. (I'd also remove having to start the combo by hitting a new button.) If Left, Left, Right triggers a Sweep, you could set it up so that Left and Right had abilities of your choice. It would be a little more strategic, and would be a lot easier to hit keys with one hand.
Basically, there is no auto-attack. Combat is more like a console game, where you have three basic attacks (left, middle, right). Your enemy has three shields which they shift around. So basically, you try and hit them where they've left openings in their defenses.
This system is all well and good. Combat is bloody and fluid, and pretty fun with just the three basic attacks.
My problem comes with special abilities, called combos. To start a special attack, you press the hotkey for that attack, and then a specific sequence of basic attacks. That executes the attack.
For some reason, I find this really awkward on a keyboard. My basic attacks are bound to 1, 2, 3. I can use special attacks bound to 4 and 5 fairly easily. However, hitting specials bound to the other number keys causes me trouble. I generally have to take my fingers off the basic attacks in order to reach the specials, and that makes it hard for me to complete the specials, as I have to get my little, ring, and middle fingers back in place. I've been experimenting with using my other hand or the mouse to trigger specials, but then I can't use that hand to control movement. WTB one more hand!
Essentially, the basic attacks take up too much of "key space" accessible to one hand, at least with the default keybindings. I might be able to do something by remapping those keys to the middle of the keyboard. But right now I find that I'm skipping most of the combos and just hitting the basic attack buttons.
A very annoying note is that if you play an archer, your bound specials bar doesn't change when you switch weapons. If switching to a bow automatically swapped the specials available, it would be much easier. It's not so bad on a WoW hunter, as you can put range on one side, and melee on the other. The problem in AoC is that you use 1-3 in both situations. So it's like 1-6 for range, and 1-3 + 7-9 for melee.
It strikes me that this system would work superbly on a console controller or gamepad. You'd use your thumb to hit the basic attack buttons, and you could queue up specials using the right shoulder pad buttons.
Though to be honest, if I had designed this system I would have designed it differently. I would have allowed the player to replace the basic attacks with new attacks, but still keep the whole directional combat with the shields. For example, if you got a Poisoned Strike, you could replace your Middle Basic attack an Middle Poisoned Strike. Then whenever you made an middle attack, you would make a poisoned strike. (You could bind the same Strike to multiple directions.)
If you combined this with abilities that had cooldowns, it would get pretty interesting. If you have a Haymaker with a 10s cooldown on your Right attack, you'd make attacks to draw shields away from the right side, then Haymaker the opponent for a ton of damage. But now you can't use your Right attack for 10s, and a smart opponent can balance shields to protect the Middle and Left sides.
It would keep the twitch and visceral nature of combat. You could still have combos, but now the components of the combo could change. (I'd also remove having to start the combo by hitting a new button.) If Left, Left, Right triggers a Sweep, you could set it up so that Left and Right had abilities of your choice. It would be a little more strategic, and would be a lot easier to hit keys with one hand.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Age of Conan: Graphics, Priest of Mitra
Continuing on, the graphics in this game are very nice. There are lots of options in character creation. Of course, the game aims for the "realistic" side of things, and thus tends to be mostly greens and browns. Seriously, I don't understand why everyone is so scared of bright, primary colors.
The water in particular, is superb. The way reflections interact with the surface is nothing short of spectacular. AoC requires a pretty hefty machine, but it uses that machine well.
Animations are very well done for the most part. The only quibble I have is that the female running animations seems a little odd. I don't think the way the elbows are positioned is quite right.
I'm skipping to the second character I made, as I want to talk about the first in more detail later. My second character was a Priest of Mitra, which is pretty much as pure a healer as you will get. You start off with a Smite spell which is pretty neat. It does a lot of damage early on, and it was pretty amusing to be one-shotting enemies as they get lifted up into the air and then dropped on the ground. Then at level 5 or so, it settled down into a more normal routine of needing to blast the mob several times.
There were some very nice touches for a priest class. They had a health buff which automatically hits everyone in your group and lasts an hour. The first healing spell I got was an Heal-Over-Time that was placed on the entire group. Are the days of Whack-A-Mole over?
The only weird part was that healing seems to be really weak. I was dishing out and taking about 20-40 damage per second. Yet my heal spell healed a grand total of 2 (!!) health every second (per person). I was trying it out and wondering if it was missing a zero or something, as it literally seemed pointless to cast. I'm not sure if healing changes later on, or if this is intended, but it seemed a little unusual.
I got the first city and started doing the destiny questline (sort of like a solo instance of the world with specific quests). That's a pretty neat idea and use of zoning. It's interesting to see more games move through time in the same zone. I didn't get very far, only to about level 7.
I do like the initial quests, though, as they are fairly meaningful, and not just "kill 10 rats." I died a few times, though it was mostly my fault for attacking multiple enemies.
So far though, I like the Priest of Mitra class. I'll probably try some of the other ones, but this class looks to be a solid choice for a healer who is used to other games.
The water in particular, is superb. The way reflections interact with the surface is nothing short of spectacular. AoC requires a pretty hefty machine, but it uses that machine well.
Animations are very well done for the most part. The only quibble I have is that the female running animations seems a little odd. I don't think the way the elbows are positioned is quite right.
I'm skipping to the second character I made, as I want to talk about the first in more detail later. My second character was a Priest of Mitra, which is pretty much as pure a healer as you will get. You start off with a Smite spell which is pretty neat. It does a lot of damage early on, and it was pretty amusing to be one-shotting enemies as they get lifted up into the air and then dropped on the ground. Then at level 5 or so, it settled down into a more normal routine of needing to blast the mob several times.
There were some very nice touches for a priest class. They had a health buff which automatically hits everyone in your group and lasts an hour. The first healing spell I got was an Heal-Over-Time that was placed on the entire group. Are the days of Whack-A-Mole over?
The only weird part was that healing seems to be really weak. I was dishing out and taking about 20-40 damage per second. Yet my heal spell healed a grand total of 2 (!!) health every second (per person). I was trying it out and wondering if it was missing a zero or something, as it literally seemed pointless to cast. I'm not sure if healing changes later on, or if this is intended, but it seemed a little unusual.
I got the first city and started doing the destiny questline (sort of like a solo instance of the world with specific quests). That's a pretty neat idea and use of zoning. It's interesting to see more games move through time in the same zone. I didn't get very far, only to about level 7.
I do like the initial quests, though, as they are fairly meaningful, and not just "kill 10 rats." I died a few times, though it was mostly my fault for attacking multiple enemies.
So far though, I like the Priest of Mitra class. I'll probably try some of the other ones, but this class looks to be a solid choice for a healer who is used to other games.
Age of Conan: Installation, Races, Classes
I picked up Age of Conan last night on a whim, and thought I'd write about my first impressions. First off, this is probably going to sound unnecessarily negative. AoC does a lot of stuff well. For example, the servers were up, running and pretty solid, which, sadly, is an accomplishment for an MMO. I really only glitched out once (I died once and the dialog to resurrect didn't come up), so technically the game--so far--is smooth. My issues are almost entirely design-driven, which I suppose is progress for the MMO industry.
A general warning, the technical requirements are pretty steep. I wouldn't pick AoC up if you have less than the recommended specs.
I'll start with the install process. When we talk about Blizzard games, we often throw around the word "polish". Whenever someone asks for a concrete example of polish, I point to the installation process for World of Warcraft. When you install WoW, the installer plays a noticeable sound (an orcish drum sound, I believe) when it is ready for the next CD. This allows you to do something else while the game is installing, and still be alerted when it is time for the next CD. Then when you insert the next CD, the install process automatically picks up from where it left off. (My guess is the autorun of the new CD communicates with the installer.)
That is polish. Taking the time and effort to clean up the little details that other people would leave undone. AoC's install, in contrast, worked fine. But you had to manually check if the installer was ready for the next DVD, and you had to click the OK button after putting in the DVD. It's a small thing, but it really symbolizes the difference between WoW and AoC, between Blizzard and the rest of the gaming industry. AoC works, and is serviceable and fun, but WoW is polished.
On to races and classes. There are three races: civilized good guys, who are white; noble barbarians, who are also white; and evil bad guys, who are black. Gotta love the casual racism of the gaming industry. These racial distinctions are enforced in the game. If you roll a Cimmerian, you cannot pick a non-white skin colour. If you roll a Stygian, you cannot pick a non-dark skin colour.
And the good/evil divide extends to classes. The black people have a single neutral class (the Archer), and all the other classes are outright evil (Demonologist, necromancer, Herald of some elder demon god, priest of Set). Meanwhile the white people have mostly good or neutral classes (there is one evil class, the Dark Templar).
Of course, Funcom probably justifies being racist by claiming to be "true to Conan's lore." Yeah, well, Howard was pretty damn sexist, but I don't see AoC imposing any but the most cosmetic differences between males and females. There aren't any stat differences between male and female characters, and either gender can be any class. But then I guess Funcom is European, and therefore, "Racism good! Sexism forbidden!"
Funcom will probably react to this by trotting out some token black NPC who they claim is a good guy ("See, not all black people are totally evil"). But actions speak louder than words. In Age of Conan, if you want to play a good, heroic class, you make a white character. If you want to play an evil class, you make a black character.
A general warning, the technical requirements are pretty steep. I wouldn't pick AoC up if you have less than the recommended specs.
I'll start with the install process. When we talk about Blizzard games, we often throw around the word "polish". Whenever someone asks for a concrete example of polish, I point to the installation process for World of Warcraft. When you install WoW, the installer plays a noticeable sound (an orcish drum sound, I believe) when it is ready for the next CD. This allows you to do something else while the game is installing, and still be alerted when it is time for the next CD. Then when you insert the next CD, the install process automatically picks up from where it left off. (My guess is the autorun of the new CD communicates with the installer.)
That is polish. Taking the time and effort to clean up the little details that other people would leave undone. AoC's install, in contrast, worked fine. But you had to manually check if the installer was ready for the next DVD, and you had to click the OK button after putting in the DVD. It's a small thing, but it really symbolizes the difference between WoW and AoC, between Blizzard and the rest of the gaming industry. AoC works, and is serviceable and fun, but WoW is polished.
On to races and classes. There are three races: civilized good guys, who are white; noble barbarians, who are also white; and evil bad guys, who are black. Gotta love the casual racism of the gaming industry. These racial distinctions are enforced in the game. If you roll a Cimmerian, you cannot pick a non-white skin colour. If you roll a Stygian, you cannot pick a non-dark skin colour.
And the good/evil divide extends to classes. The black people have a single neutral class (the Archer), and all the other classes are outright evil (Demonologist, necromancer, Herald of some elder demon god, priest of Set). Meanwhile the white people have mostly good or neutral classes (there is one evil class, the Dark Templar).
Of course, Funcom probably justifies being racist by claiming to be "true to Conan's lore." Yeah, well, Howard was pretty damn sexist, but I don't see AoC imposing any but the most cosmetic differences between males and females. There aren't any stat differences between male and female characters, and either gender can be any class. But then I guess Funcom is European, and therefore, "Racism good! Sexism forbidden!"
Funcom will probably react to this by trotting out some token black NPC who they claim is a good guy ("See, not all black people are totally evil"). But actions speak louder than words. In Age of Conan, if you want to play a good, heroic class, you make a white character. If you want to play an evil class, you make a black character.
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