Community and Lobby-Like Gaming

In a comment to the previous post, Milady asks:

I was wondering what would you think about switching from an MMO to a game such as Diablo. You have said that D3 plays similarly to D2, yet the latter came out many years ago, when the community had not reached the stage of persistent world population, and the social ties that you could form were not as strong as in MMOs. Many people are migrating from WoW and other MMOs into D3 - would they like this step backwards into lobby-like gaming? 

Could you play without a persistent world, without a community?

There are multiple ways of looking at this question.

First, for me at least, Diablo is closer to a single-player game than a multiplayer game. Multiplayer is fun, but the first time I play any level, it will be as a single-player. You can go at your own pace, listen to all the voice-overs, experiment with different abilities, and ensure that every single barrel on the level has been broken before moving on. I suspect that the initial play-through for the majority of people will be similar, or maybe co-op with a real-life friend.

In this view, community really doesn't mean anything for a single-player game.

Second, if you play an MMO in a transient fashion, you will find that it is very similar to lobby-like gaming. You have to join the community in order to experience that sense of community. And a lot of people don't join the community. I know that I have never done so in any MMO other than WoW.[1]

So D3 would be just as persistent as my experiences in RIFT, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, etc. Of course, that may be the reason I never played for more than a few months.

However, I really think that the MMO literati gravely underestimate how many people actually play in this fashion, how many people are not part of the community.  In my opinion, what we think of the community in many of these games is actually a minority of the total playerbase.

Third, even transient games have an external community consisting of the forums and websites, where people can discuss the game, brag about stuff they done, and commiserate with others who have lost high-level hardcore characters. I suspect that the people who do end up playing Diablo for years tap into this community.

Fourth, the final view I can think of is that maybe Diablo becomes the equivalent of television for a lot of people. Log in, kill some monsters, get some loot, and log out. Maybe zerg a boss with some random people online. Mindless relaxation to unwind after work. In this view, community is really not important, and may even be detrimental as you don't really want to spend brain power and effort on that community.

Personally I don't think I could play Diablo for as long as I played WoW without the persistent world and community. But I also don't expect to play it for that long. It's a single-player game for me, with a little bit of random multiplayer after. I will probably play Diablo until the next interesting game comes along.

[1] Technically, I did join a guild in SWTOR. If I had made to the cap and started doing things with them, I might have become part of that community.

[Diablo 3] Open Beta Impressions

Diablo 3 is, well, pretty much Diablo.

Gameplay is pretty much the exact same as the previous version. About the only new element is monsters sometimes drop health globes. It's an interesting mechanic because it sort of shifts your relationship with health potions a little bit.

There's also no real mana potions anymore. Resources either regenerate with time, or specific attacks build resources and other attacks spend them.

A lot of stuff got streamlined. Town Portal is now an ability (with a long cast time) instead of scrolls. Items are automatically identified. You pick up gold automatically. All your characters share gold, the stash, and crafting professions.

The major area of change is how abilities are given out. I think Diablo 3 is the final nail in the coffin for talent trees, at least as far as Blizzard is concerned.

Instead you get a series of exclusive choices. I.e. you choose one of 5 primary attacks (left-mouse button), 1 of 5 secondary attacks (right-mouse button), 1 of 5 defensive abilities, etc. You can also modify each attack with different runes that alter the attack. Like the monk has a spinning kick secondary attack. The first rune adds some fire and a knockback, and the animation changes a bit.

All of these choices are unlocked as you level, and changing your spec up is painless. I'm generally a fan of the series of exclusive choices idiom. I think the total possible number of combinations is just as large as with talent trees, and the total number of viable combinations is much larger.

There's also some interesting innovations in multiplayer. For example, loot is generated separately for each player, so there's no ninja'ing.

It's interesting to look at D3 in light of future MMOs, and think about what will get carried forward. I think the individual player loot is one element that will show up in future MMOs. Indeed, Looking For Raid is going to work that way in Pandaria. As well, many elements are shared across your characters, including gold, your bank/stash, and somewhat surprisingly, your crafting progression.

As for classes, they're pretty straightforward. The witch doctor is a bit weird though. I'm not sure what class I will play. Normally I just go with the knight/paladin archetype, but D3 doesn't have one. Mechanically, the armored melee fighter is the barbarian, but it just doesn't feel the same. I was thinking about the Demon Hunter, but like Spinks, I'm not thrilled with the high heels. Boots would have been just as sexy, and far less stupid. But otherwise, the Demon Hunter looks good, so I'll probably end up going with that.

In the end, this is Diablo. It looks, feels, sounds, and plays like Diablo. It has the classic Blizzard polish, attention to detail, and excellent performance on even somewhat older systems.

Guilds for New Players

Syncaine of Hardcore Casual asks, "what excuse do [new] people have for not joining EVE University?"

That echos a lot of advice that Eve Online players have been giving me. In many ways, Syncaine's question is aimed squarely at me, as I'm in the exact position he's asking about. So here is my attempt to give a serious answer to that question.

The thing is that I don't like leaving guilds. I will leave if it becomes necessary. But ideally, it would never become necessary. And so I really don't like joining a guild that I know I will leave. And that's the case for newbie guilds like Eve University.

This even extends into all the themepark/leveling games I've played recently (hence the reason this post is not tagged with Eve Online). My experience in WoW has led me to believe that endgame guilds are structured the way they are for a reason, because that is the structure that is most conducive to success.

As a result, I really don't like joining all these leveling guilds that dream of one day raiding. I've seen guilds that tread that path, and it never seems to work out. I just don't have faith that a random guild will navigate the transition successfully. So to me there are three choices:

1. Join a leveling guild and try to raid - almost never works out, getting that critical mass of players willing to commit to raiding is hard for an adhoc group.

2. Join a leveling guild and then leave for a raiding guild at max level - I think this is unfair to the leaders of the leveling guild. They're trying to raid, and that's hard enough to learn, without people abandoning them

3. Level unguilded and then join a raiding guild - The least-worst option. But leveling is very lonely.

The other aspect is that I think it's important that I contribute to the guild's goals. Joining a guild should be a two-way street. The guild helps me, and I help the guild.

Guilds which are explicitly aimed at new players are all one-sided relationships. It's all take and no give on the part of the new player. And that feels less like a guild and more like charity. It may not be fashionable anymore, but I do have my pride.

These the two aspects of a newbie guild that give me pause: the fact that I know I will have to leave; and the fact that I think the guild-player relationship is overly one-sided. These are the reasons that I prefer not to join guilds like Eve University or even those random guilds which whisper you in Elwynn Forest.

[SWTOR] Free Time for Level 50s

Lots of buzz about Bioware giving current subscribers with Level 50s a month of free time. The long-time subscribers without level 50s are naturally unhappy, and so we'll see how that plays out. Personally, I thought SWTOR strongly encouraged someone to get to 50 before starting alts, so I'm not sure how common the above scenario really is.

But I'm not really interested in talking about that aspect. What's more interesting to me is the timing of this offer.

Bioware is giving end-game players a month of free time right when a major, heavily-advertised patch hits. Shouldn't the patch itself be a major attraction? Shouldn't people want to stay subscribed to explore the new patch and content?

To me this is like Blizzard giving every raider a month of free time right when Dragon Soul comes out. It's nice, but it's really unnecessary. Everyone would stay subscribed for a little while to poke around in Dragon Soul and LFR.

It seems like it would be much better to give out the free time a month or two after the patch has landed. To keep people from unsubscribing, to keep them playing a bit longer.

I don't know. Maybe Bioware needs to guarantee subscription numbers for a very specific date. Maybe there's something specific in their player habits that makes this idea useful. But I just don't understand the logic behind the timing of this offer.

[Eve Online] The Path From Here to There

By now, I think I have a reasonable handle on the Eve interface. It's not perfect, there's lots of small details that I just know there is a way to smooth out, but haven't yet figured out how to do it. For example, on the overhead display, I want to create a tab that just shows enemies. I managed to create a tab that shows stuff I can loot, and it's been an enormous help. But I just can't get one to show only enemies.

Ship-wise, I'm flying an Incursus, which seems to be the best Gallente faction frigate-class combat ship. So far, it's been pretty solid, and has allowed me to complete all the Level 1 missions I've been given.

Skill-wise, I've discovered certificates, which are groupings of related skills. Earning certificates is like a guide to what skills you should pick up. I'm going for what appears to be a standard fighter line, with things like Gunnery and Armor Tanking. Not really sure if this is the best route, but at least it's a direction.

The hardest thing in Eve, I find, is figuring out what goal to set for yourself. Or, if your goal is sufficiently advanced, figuring out the path from you to your goal, what sub-goals you need.  The truth is that I don't really know what I want to do in Eve, and as a result I log on, do a couple missions, and then log off.

This is the big advantage of the theme park games. My goal is to get to max level. My sub-goal is to get to the next level. My sub-goal below that is to finish the current quest I am on.

There is a path there that really is not present in Eve. In Eve, even questions like, "should I be moving on to a new solar system" are really hard to answer. How is this solar system really different from the one next to it?

I guess my next goal in Eve is to get and fly a cruiser-class ship. And I can see the skills I need to take to get to that point. What I don't really see is how to afford that cruiser. A level 1 mission pays like 100k ISK. The cruiser costs something like 100M ISK. Am I really to run 1000 missions? Or are there higher paying missions at some point? Or am I expected to take up mining or trading?

I find Eve is extraordinarily opaque when it comes to questions like this. But in some ways that's part of its appeal. Any answer could be the right answer.

I really feel the appeal of a corporation at this point in the game. At least in a corp, someone could give me orders and I could carry out those orders and feel that something is moving forward.

In a lot of respects, I feel the same as when I was a junior programmer. I understood the core concepts, how to program, and how to solve simple problems. What I didn't understand was the jump to large programs, and the larger architecture. That's something I really only learned while working on larger programs, getting a feel for larger systems, and seeing what older and more experienced programmers did.

Basically, it's a lot easier to be a worker bee for a little bit before striking out on your own. You learn so much more that way.

Maybe the answer is that I should join a corp. But here Eve's reputation works against it. It is a notoriously unfriendly community. That makes the whole corporation thing seem even more daunting, especially if you're just playing casually and know you will be unreliable.

[Pandaria Beta] Cleanse and Holy Radiance

I want to take a quick look at a couple of Holy spells that are slightly changing in Pandaria: Cleanse and Holy Radiance.

Cleanse is getting an 8 second cooldown, but will dispel all magic (for Holy), poison, and disease debuffs on a target.  So basically cleansing multiple targets becomes a lot harder, and there's a window between cleanses where a debuff can do damage. But at the same time, you only need to spend one GCD to wipe away all debuffs. It's an interesting trade-off and it will be intriguing to see how this plays out.

For example, in PvE, you might have a boss toss out exactly two debuffs at the same time. Then you have to triage and pick one to cleanse and one to heal. It should make debuff management more interesting.

One nice touch is that if you Cleanse someone without any debuffs, it does not invoke the cooldown. So you can quickly recover from a Cleanse error, the error only costs you mana and a GCD. Good work by the Blizz team to put this in.

Holy Radiance has changed too. Instead of putting a short HoT on people, it instead heals the target for a certain amount, and heals people around the target for half that. If the target is healed for 1000, everyone around her is healed for 500 each.

One thing about the old version is that if you cast it twice in a row on the same target, the HoT did not stack, so you lost a lot of the healing. But if you cast it on different targets, the HoT would stack. So the optimum way to use Holy Radiance was to rotate your target. If you did not know exactly how the HoTs stacked, you might have been far less effective with your Holy Radiance.

The new version also encourages you to switch targets, but it's a lot more forgiving if you cast it on the same person.  For example, if Anna and Beth have both lost 1500 health, and you cast HR for 1000 on Anna twice, Anna is healed for 1500 (500 overheal) and Beth is healed for 1000. But if you switch targets, both are healed for 1500.  Switching targets is better, but casting twice is not as bad, you only overhealed a little bit, and not as much as you would have with the old HR. In fact, if both targets had been at lower health, you wouldn't have any wasted healing at all.

I really like the new design of Holy Radiance. It accomplishes the same goal of rotating your target as the previous version, but in a far more obvious and elegant manner. Excellent work by the class design team.

[Pandaria Beta] First Look at Holy and Retribution

This beta build is pretty buggy, so I'm just going to talk about paladin changes in broad strokes.

There's been some cleanup of the UI, our Auras are gone, and the Seals now appear in their place. Hand of Reckoning has finally been stripped of the "Hand of" part, and is just named Reckoning. It only took three years.

I only got to look at Holy and Retribution, because changing specializations is broken.

For Holy, single-target healing is more or less the same as the previous edition. The only significant difference I saw was that Cleanse now has an 8s cooldown, but dispels all relevant debuffs.

AoE-healing seems to have a lot of tweaks, but I don't think it has fundamentally changed. It still follows a Holy Radiance-Holy Shock-Light of Dawn pattern, but there are little changes. Holy Radiance currently heals the target and then does 50% of the heal to surrounding players. A bit of the healing also transfers back to the Beacon of Light target. It also causes Holy Shock to behave much the same way. Light of Dawn may no longer be a directed cone, but that might be a bug.

For Retribution, it feels much the same as previous, i.e. all the same abilities. But the Holy Power cycle has been sped up. Basically all non-finishers now produce Holy Power, so you can use Templar's Verdict essentially once every 4 GCDs. The finishers also cost exactly 3 holy power, simplifying things a little bit. I generally liked the feel of Retribution, though many posters on the forums are saying that it feels too slow. Personally, I don't see their argument, it felt like I almost always had a button to press. But I don't play Retribution a lot and am not an expert.

Retribution also got a full-blown AoE rotation, with where you can use Seal of Righteousness instead of Seal of Truth, Hammer of the Righteous instead of Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm instead of Templar's Verdict.

Hopefully I will be able to take a look at Protection in the next build.

So far, it feels like paladin specs have been cleaned up a fair bit, but no fundamental changes to the way we play.  Which I think is pretty good. I thought paladins played fairly well in Cataclysm and am happy to see that continuing on into Pandaria.

[Eve Online] A Comedy of Errors

I must be the worst Eve Online player in the world.

With all the chatter about Eve Online lately, and being a bit bored, I decided to give Eve a whirl. Ironically, two hours after subscribing, my Pandaria beta invite arrived. I did try Eve a couple of years ago, but basically gave up after 5 minutes with the interface. This time I resolved that I would make it further in, and at least get to a different system.

The initial tutorial went mostly well, until I got to a mission requiring me to take some documents to another system three jumps away, that had some new agents. I made it to the destination system, and then realized that I didn't have the documents in my cargo hold.  So I had to go all the way back.

When I got back, I just could not figure out how to transfer goods from the station to my cargo hold.[1] After numerous clicking I accidentally clicked the "Quit Mission" button on the Tutorial Agent.[2]

Doing that reset the tutorial missions back to the very beginning. Nonplussed, I set out to do them again. The first mission involves you flying out and picking up a new ship. I did that, and exchanged my slightly-geared ship for a completely new ship. However, the next mission involved shooting pirates. When I did the mission the first time, I got a gun and some ammo. This time, the tutorial insisted that I had already gotten the gun. Which was true, except the gun was mounted on the other ship that I had left out in deep space.

So faced with a mission that involved killing pirates and no gun, I decamped to the new system three jumps away, hoping that one of the agents there had a mission I could do to earn some ISK to buy a gun.

Luckily, one of the agents had an introductory mining mission. She gave me a newbie mining laser and sent me out. Eventually I figured out how to find asteroids. Eve has an interesting relationship between the gameworld and UI. 90% of objects in space can be accessed through the UI. Which is fine and dandy until you need something like asteroids which don't appear on the UI.

But eventually I got that figured out, and mined 1000 units of Concentrated Veldspar and headed back to the station. On the station, I could not finish the mission. After scrutinizing the mission log, it turned out that the Agent wanted 1000 units of Veldspar, not Concentrated Veldspar. Apparently there were two different types of asteroids out there. So I unloaded the Concentrated Veldspar and headed back out, this time to seach the asteroids until I found regular Veldspar. I found some eventually, mined it, and returned back to the station.

And this time, I simply could not figure out how to complete the quest. I think, and I may be wrong, that I was supposed to mine in a specific spot, instead of any random asteroid belt. After much frustration, I clicked the Quit Mission button, hoping it would reset.[2]  Instead of resetting, the agent simply went silent and does not offer missions anymore.

I finally managed to do another mission, got some ISK and bought a gun and some ammo. Then I bought more ammo after I jumped into space and could not load the gun, and realized the first ammo was the wrong type.

Finally though, I was able to return to the original tutorial system, complete the tutorial missions and get back to the new system successfully. It only took me two days. Clearly I'm ready for null-sec.

[1] Though I did eventually figure out a way to load cargo, I'm probably missing something, as this seems like quite a complicated process for something that is done a lot. I imagined you open a window with the station items, then open a window with the cargo hold, and drag and drop. Or possibly an option in the context-sensitive right-click menu. Dragging and dropping onto a tab of a window seems ugly to me.

[2] This is the biggest lesson I've learned so far in Eve. Never click a Quit Mission or Refuse Mission button. Everything goes badly if you do that.

[Pandaria Beta] Initial Thoughts

I got in the Mists of Pandaria Beta with the latest wave of invites. I only played for about half an hour or so late last night. I rolled a pandaren monk and poked around a bit. Here are some quick thoughts:

• On the character screen, classes are shown in high-end armor. Guess what paladins are wearing? That's right, Judgement! I love how Judgement armor has come to symbolize the WoW paladin.


• The monk Chi resource is interesting. It's quite close to rogue combo points, but surprisingly plays quite differently. Fixed, and different, Chi costs for abilities end up making the monk play in a completely different manner. I find it very interesting how one tiny change to the resource system results in a completely different class.


• The initial monk attacks are a chi builder, a punch that costs 1 chi and does more damage if the enemy is over 50%, and a kick which costs 2 chi, is only usable below 35%, and refunds one chi if it kills the enemy. This means that my standard gameplay so far is to float with 2 chi in my pool, alternate the builder and punch, and then finish off the mob with a kick. It's a completely different rhythm than the rogue.


• The monk's use of weapons is also interesting. They stay sheathed most of the item, and are only brought out for specific abilities.


• So far, pandaren are reasonably serious. They aren't a joke race like goblins.


• The other interesting mechanic is abilities with a cooldown but multiple "charges". So far, the only ability like this is Roll. It has a 15 second cooldown, but 2 charges. That means that you can Roll twice in a row, but it then takes 15s for 1 charge to be restored, and another 15s for the second charge to come back. (This description isn't the greatest, but it's very intuitive when you see it.) I think this is an interesting design space to open up, as it allows abilities to used multiple times quickly, but still enforces the cooldown and overall rate of ability use. I'm looking forward to seeing what Blizzard does with this mechanic.

So those are my initial thoughts on the Mists of Pandaria beta. I'd like to copy Coriel over at some point and have a look at high level paladin abilities.

Is there anything else people would like to see discussed or tried out?

Warlock Tanks

One of the more exciting Pandaria Beta revelations was the existence of a glyph which allows Demonology warlocks to tank things.  Sadly, the hopes and dreams of many warlocks were dashed when Ghostcrawler declared that glyph was more of a fun item, that maybe would allow the warlocks to offtank mobs and maybe emergency tank for a short while.

That reminds me of paladin tanking back in Vanilla and early TBC. A gimmick tank. It made paladins very unhappy, and finally Blizzard gave us full tanking capabilities.

I would go so far as to say that this glyph is a bad idea. Allowing people to think that they might tank, but not actually letting them tank sounds like a recipe for failure.

In my opinion, if Blizzard wants to go down this path, they should embrace it fully. Make Demonology a proper tanking spec, and the Felguard into a pet which enhances your tanking (as opposed to one that tanks for you). I think it might be kind of cool, and would give warlocks an extra bit of differentiation from mages. Mages and warlocks are a bit too similar, and it might be nice to separate them a bit more.

Of course this means a lot more work for Blizzard, adding another tank spec to balance. Not to mention that existing demonology warlocks might be unhappy that they got turned into tanks.

But if Blizzard doesn't want warlocks to properly tank, they should remove the glyph. Half measures are just going to annoy everyone. The experience of early paladin tanks is evidence of this, and Blizzard should really avoid making the same mistake twice.

Artistic Integrity

So the news is that Bioware is looking at revisiting the ending of Mass Effect 3. A lot of people decry this as a lacking "artistic integrity".

Judging by the posts I've read, most of these people haven't actually played through the ending of the ME3. Seriously, read this PC Gamer article featuring other game writers, and tell me how many of them have actually beaten the game in question. Heck, most of them are too busy shilling their own game in their answer. So much for their vaunted artistic integrity.

In any case, there are two points I'd like to make about artistic integrity.

Artists Make Mistakes

Artists are human beings just like the rest of us. That means that they too can make mistakes, even when it comes to their own art. Their choices are not always the best choices. Sometimes, the artist can go back and fix those mistakes. Or, in the case of George Lucas, make new mistakes.

My favorite movie is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. But the version I adore is not the same version as the one released in movie theaters. It is significantly changed. In fact, Ridley Scott has continued to tinker with the film. He has been fixing his mistakes.

Most mediums don't really allow the artist to easily fix their work. Plays and theater do, and playwrights have often adapted their works after initial runs. Sometimes movies can when new editions are released to take advantage of new mediums. I've read novels where the writer returns to her work (often the first book published) ten or twenty years later and updates it, editing it better, adding a couple scenes, and generally cleaning up and polishing.

Computer games are a medium where it is easy to make changes, to fix mistakes. None of us would blink an eye at a patch that fixed a mechanical imbalance. Why is fixing a story mistake so far beyond the pale?

DLC

There is an old story about Winston Churchill and a socialite:

Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?"
Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"
Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price” 

Mass Effect 3 had such crass marketing ploys as Day-One DLC and a pop up during the ending urging the player to purchase more DLC. Those sorts of stunts already establish exactly what sort of company Bioware is.  And it is not exactly one brimming with artistic integrity.

A company cannot indulge in things like Day-One DLC and expect the audience to take claims of "artistic integrity" seriously. We already know that you're for sale, and we're just haggling about the price.

Conclusion

I regard the ending of Mass Effect 3 as a mistake. Unlike a lot of other artists, the medium Bioware works in offers them the chance to fix that mistake, to improve the work of art. As well, by choosing to indulge in marketing shenanigans, Bioware has already compromised its claims of integrity, and those claims are not likely to be taken seriously by the audience.

From either side, I find the excuse of "artistic integrity" to avoid changes to be very weak. But if Bioware honestly believes that their ending is the best possible ending, that on reflection it was not a mistake, then they should stand by that ending. That choice has consequences, as the audience is free to disagree, and re-evaluate the quality and skill of the artist and the work.

Note: The comment thread may contain spoilers for Mass Effect 3.

TERA Beta Weekend

I was in the Beta Weekend for TERA, an upcoming MMO. TERA is a bit of a cross between Asian MMOs and WoW/RIFT/SWTOR. It's still a theme park MMO, but a lot of the sensibilities are more reminiscent of Asian MMOs than Western ones.

TERA's main selling point is that it is more of an "action" MMO. The creature animations "telegraph" their attacks, and you can manually dodge or block the attack. As well, you can chain attacks together in combos, to produce something a little bit closer to an action game than a standard MMO.  You don't select a target, but rather attack what's in front of you.

TERA actually does a very good job with this. Combat is rather interesting, and a bit more interactive than standard MMOs. The real standout in TERA is the animations. They are superb.

There are also lots of other nice ideas. For example, harvesting a resource node gives you a small temporary buff for the next few minutes. There's this concept of "stamina" which slowly drains over half an hour or so. You replenish stamina at campfires, and you burn charms to give everyone near the campfire a long-term buff.

However, TERA is pretty shameless. It's the type of MMO where all the female characters wear high heels, and extraordinarily revealing gear. It's actually somewhat impressive at the sheer number of ways TERA's artists can make inappropriate gear.

One race even looks like prepubescent girls, which comes across as rather sketchy. I honestly don't think the developers mean it in a negative way (well, I hope not), as it's paired with another race of furry round badger type animals. But maybe it just loses something in translation. An archetype (lolicon?) which has a specific meaning in Asian culture, but not in Western culture.

As a result of the last two items, the audience TERA seems to attract is rather distasteful. Area chat is rude at best, and downright disgusting at worst. Regardless of the game itself, I would rather not play with those types of people.

Which is a bit of a shame. The game itself has a pretty decent core. The animations are excellent, the classes are interesting and varied, the combat is fun. Some of the subsystems like trading and crafting are a little confusing, and the game likes randomness a little too much. But when I turned off player chat, the game became surprisingly appealing.

Still, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. TERA chose high heels, skimpy armor, and lolicons. And thus they get the audience that is primarily attracted by high heels, skimpy armor, and lolicons.

[RIFT] Life at 50

I decided to go back to RIFT for a little while. When I last left RIFT, I had just levelled a cleric to level 50, the max level. So I've been working on the cleric since then. I've not really bothered with looking up information on the internet, mostly playing the game by itself.

It's an interesting experience, hitting endgame without being plugged into the external community. It is kind of daunting, and probably far from optimal.

Take something as simple as enchants. I have no idea if RIFT has enchants. I checked the AH for item enhancements, and there were enchants, but it looked like only for weapons. I'm not sure if there are enchants from other sources, like factions.

Speaking of factions, I'm earning reputation with them, but I have no idea where the quartermasters are, or even if they sell anything useful.

I've mostly been running dungeons. You need a certain gear level to get into Expert dungeons, and I finally managed that, and have done a few of them. They're more or less like WoW Wrath Heroics. Pretty easy at this point, with a few mechanics you have to watch for. The groups are pretty nice, but it's mostly an AoE fest.

One interesting thing is that the queue time for DPS is actually rather short. I sign up for dungeons as DPS or heals, and I'm about 50/50 on which role I get.

So far, RIFT at 50 is pretty fun. But the experience has illustrated to me just how large the gap between someone who is "informed" about everything, and someone who just relies on in-game hints or advice is.

Bubble-Hearth Returns!

A lot of Mists of Pandaria information has flooded the internet today. Here at BoK, however, we focus on only the truly vital and important elements for our discerning readers.  To wit: Bubble-Hearth is back as a Minor Glyph!

Glyph of Righteous Retreat: During Divine Shield, you can invoke your Hearthstone 50% faster.

Ahh, bubble-hearth. How we love thee. Things are looking up for Mists of Pandaria.

Here are the other paladin minor glyphs:

Glyph of the Falling Avenger: You slow fall during Avenging Wrath.
Glyph of Winged Vengence: You grow larger during Avenging Wrath.

Pretty neat. Wings give you slow fall and make you bigger.

Glyph of Bladed Judgement: Your Judgement spell depicts an axe or sword instead of a hammer, if you have an axe or sword equipped.
Glyph of Fire From the Heavens: Your Judgement and Hammer of Wrath critical strikes call down fire from the sky.

Axes and swords are cool, and adds a little customization. As for Fire From the Heavens, we'll have to see the graphic. Judgement and Hammer of Wrath are already flashy, adding fire might be overkill. Or it might be awesome. There is a fine line between the two, especially when it comes to holy fire.

Glyph of Mounted Kings: Mounting a paladin mount automatically casts Blessing of Kings on you.
Glyph of the Luminous Charger: Your paladin class mounts glow with Holy Light.

Mounted Kings is a bit odd. But hey, why not? And it might be good in battlegrounds where you can just mount up and have Kings cast on the raid. Luminous Charger should be awesome. Though paladin chargers already have a bit of glow. But maybe the glow is turned up to 11. Should be good times.

I'm thinking Righteous Retreat, Falling Avenger, and Luminous Charger for my three minor glyphs.

Excellent work by the Mists team. Paladin minor glyphs have been very lackluster up to now, and Blizzard is correcting that with a vengeance.

Mass Effect 3: My Ending

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3.

A commenter suggested that I write my own ending for ME3. They may have been tongue-in-cheek, but I'm bored, so here's my ending.

Continued below the jump.

[SWTOR] Mass Effect 3 Fallout

I want to express my displeasure about the ending of Mass Effect 3 to Bioware in the strongest possible terms.

I know, it's not really fair to the SWTOR team. But they got the advantages of the Bioware name when times were good, so now they must live with the downsides of that name.

Edit: Just to clarify, this is me cancelling my SWTOR subscription. In my view, companies like EA will only care if protests have a monetary effect. Outrage on a forum or blog does nothing.

Warning: Some of the comments contain spoilers.

Mass Effect 3: Endings (Spoilers!)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Mass Effect 3.

99% of Mass Effect 3 is amazing, beautiful, outstanding, and superbly-written. 1% is a horrific travesty. Unfortunately, that 1% is the ending.

(The rest is below the break to avoid spoilers.)

Flow and Fiero

Zac Hill, who is on the Development Team for Magic: the Gathering, wrote an excellent article the other day: Sculpting Flow and Fiero. It's written from a Magic perspective, but a lot of it applies to games in general.

Flow and fiero are the two emotions evoked by games. From Zac Hill's article, here is the description of flow:

The flow experience is one of the most universally euphoric experiences human beings enjoy. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines it as "the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning." In fact, he dedicated almost a decade of his life to researching flow. Where can we find it? Why do we enjoy it so much? And what are the secrets to getting more of it?

Csikszentmihalyi found that central to the flow experience were three factors: clear goals, rigidly defined rules of engagement, and the potential for measured improvement in the context of those goals and rules.

And the description of fiero:

If flow represents the height of the human capacity to learn—and therefore to triumph—fiero is the payoff that happens once we do that. 

According to Dr. McGonigal, fiero is "possibly the most primal rush we can experience." It's the feeling we get when we conquer an obstacle that, for whatever reason, is emotionally important to us. It's the weird and surreal force that leads to touchdown dances, fist-pumps, and the compulsion to scream "GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL" when someone scores in a Premier League football match. 

The harder the challenge, the more severe the payoff. We love, after all, to confirm our own narratives of exceptionalism. But the obstacles we overcome must feel genuine. If I've just taught someone Magic, something is wrong with me if I just relish the opportunity to bash in that player's face by playing every match like it's the finals of the Pro Tour. On the other hand, a masterfully sculpted game like the recent Kibler-Finkel semifinals feels like a well-choreographed dance, and the moments where we win such games feel viscerally like they mean something. The root of that meaning is the fiero impulse, which inspires optimism by evincing mastery—and mastery helps us feel capable of meeting the most intense challenges of our lives.

An excellent article, and these two concepts seem very important to MMOs.  The part that MMOs are struggling with is taking the flow and fiero, which exist on an individual level, and trying to evoke them on the group level.

Mass Effect 3!

Yeah, I wouldn't expect any real posts for like a week.

Companion Affection

Milady wrote an interesting post on the evolution of Bioware's romances on her site Hypercritism. I started to post a response, but then had to think about it some more. It seems to me that the real issue is not so much the writing of romances, so much as it is the underlying companion affection system.

The companion affection system reminds me of valor points in WoW. The connection is probably not obvious, but they're both systems which have been iterated on over time, and which may no longer serve their original purpose.

Think about why Bioware came up with companion affection. What problem was it intended to solve?

In the early Bioware/Black Isle games, your relationship with a companion was really independent of your actions in the game, independent of your character's nature. Really the only thing that mattered was your previous conversations with the character and your progress in the game. Those were the keys which unlocked subsequent conversations.

I think the original idea behind companion affection was that your character's personality--as revealed through her actions in the game--should matter to your companions. A good-aligned character should find it easier to get along with other good-aligned people, and harder with people who share different values.  I think this idea makes sense, and is a reasonable behavior to try and simulate.

So Bioware decided on a simple scale. If your character took an action or dialogue a party member agrees with, your affection with that character increases. If they disagree, the affection decreases.

The next hurdle comes when you have more companions that party slots, and the game has roles. If your character fulfills the same combat role as Alistair, you're not going to have him in your party. But that means that Alistair's affection does not change, and so you will never see Alistair's personal storyline.

So Bioware implemented gifts. Gifts allow you to increase the affection of companions you don't adventure with. In The Old Republic, gifts also allow you to increase affection if you don't quest, if you PvP or do space battles or group instances.

But if you think about it, gifts also invalidate the very purpose of the companion system. Your character's personality doesn't matter to the companion any more. Instead you just ply them with gifts until their stories unlock.

What the gifts do is turn the companion affection system from a simulation into a grind. Another xp/rep grind that you fill out for rewards or to unlock content. I bet many players in SWTOR will have all five companions with their affection maxed out.

The other part of this is that players, especially MMO players, don't really like making permanent decisions, especially decisions that close off content. Gifts allow you to circumvent the choices made during leveling. Your choices are no longer permanent.

I think that companion affection systems would work better with two changes. First, no gifts, no ways to circumvent the choices you make in the game. Your companions react to your character as revealed by the choices you make.

Second, changes in companion affection are not restricted to your current companions, but rather occur for all the companions. This means that you can't avoid the loss of affection by using a different conversation. Conversation and decisions trigger a reaction in all characters, so a decision might see a gain in affection for some characters, and a loss for others.

Of course, the downside of this is that you won't see the stories for all the companions. Maybe the companion affection system is entirely unnecessary, and the old way of unlocking stories as the game progresses was just better. Maybe trying to make your character's personality--outside conversations with companions--matter to your companions is not worth the effort, and has too many negative consequences.