FFXIV 2.55 Patch

Oh wow! What a way to end the main story and set up for the expansion!

Can't really say much else, because pretty much everything is a massive spoiler.

FFXIV is simply the best MMO on the market at the moment. I am eagerly anticipating Heavensward.

Edit: Also, I can't believe I forgot about this because of all the stuff that happened afterward, but the new 8-man fight is glorious. One of the best dragon fights I've seen in any MMO. It's not very complex, but tells its story perfectly, and has a great enrage mechanic.

(Warning: there may be spoilers in the comments.)

Pillars of Eternity: Further Thoughts

The Bear

I killed the bear.

I had to gain two levels and get two companions, but the bear died. And it turned out that there was a really interesting story and moral dilemma attached to the bear.

As well, apparently there are two bears on Hard Mode! I'm not trying that any time soon.

Story

The story in Pillars of Eternity strongly reminds me of Robin Hobb's Soldier Son Trilogy. It's obviously not directly related, but seems to hit similar themes. The Soldier Son books were pretty decent. Hopefully Pillars of Eternity is not as "mean" to the main character. Ms. Hobb really put her hero through the wringer.

Sneaking

One interesting mechanic is that the game pushes you to explore dungeons in stealth mode. If you are in stealth, you detect traps, find extra treasure and secrets, and get advanced notice of enemies before they see you. You can put the entire party in stealth and move as a group, so at least you don't need to micromanage a scout. But stealth still slows you down significantly.

It's an interesting design choice. On one hand, it is very atmospheric to sneak through the dungeon, carefully watching for traps or enemies. On the other hand, it is a bit tedious.

Conversation Meta-information

I turned on the conversation meta-information option. This tells you if a conversation choice has an associated trait like Honest, Cruel, Passionate, etc. I was having a really hard time matching choices to what the developers thought were the traits. For example, I got a point in Stoic, and I was completely surprised by that.

I'm really not sure about this decision, though. It might be better to just choose the response that I think best fits the situation, and take the traits as they come.

The other part of the issue is that it's sometimes hard to tell when it's an important choice where traits come into play, and when you're just going through all the options in the conversation tree to extract as much information as possible.

Melee Damage Dealers

A while ago, I posted about the Trinity, and how threat was important to keep the melee dps viable. I think Pillars of Eternity is proving me correct. PoE does not have threat, but characters do have "Engagement". Basically if you are in melee combat with someone, you can't really break away to attack a different character. You can attack another character who comes into melee range though.

So I have two sword-and-shield tanks (my paladin and fighter). My standard plan is to have those two engage the enemy and have the other characters fire from range. So far it's working pretty well.

However, I got an NPC who seemed to have short-range spells. He also had a two-handed sword and heavy armor. So I sent him into melee combat with the two tanks. The monsters all turned to him and wrecked him. I ended up switching him back to range and trying to station him just behind the tanks.

I'm not sure I really understand how a melee damage dealer is supposed to work in this game.

Conclusions

All in all, Pillars of Eternity is going strong. I've done most of the first area, and have just made it to the large city. Time for some good old-fashioned city adventuring a la Sigil from Planescape.

Pillars of Eternity: First Impressions

I was killed by a bear.

In fact, I'm pretty sure this was how my first death in Baldur's Gate happened. So by that standard, Pillars of Eternity is already off to an excellent start.

Pillars of Eternity is a new RPG by Obsidian, who are Black Isle veterans responsible for games like Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. PoE was kickstarted a couple of years ago, to make an RPG like the great D&D RPGs of the late 1990s.

I'm only an hour in, and so far the game looks excellent. It's very much in the style of Baldur's Gate, with the same isometric view, and similar controls. However, the setting is completely new. I haven't seen very much of the game though.

The game is very text-heavy. It's looking like the level of Planescape: Torment. I consider this an excellent sign, but your mileage may vary.

I created a human paladin. One interesting thing about paladins in this game is that there are five Orders. Each order values different traits. The game measures what decisions you make that are in accordance with your traits, and your paladin abilities scale with that. So if your Order values diplomacy, the more diplomatic actions you take, the stronger a paladin you are.

The Orders are pretty neat, especially the Bleakwalkers, who are cruel and merciless. They feel that the best way to end war is to make fighting so deadly that the enemy sues for peace rather than engaging in combat. To that end, they give no quarter in battle. I chose a more traditional paladin order, though.

All the classes seem to have different elements like this, and there are something like 11 classes.

For videogames, PoE represents a triumph of Kickstarter. An excellent, meaty game made in a genre and style which the major publishers have ignored. It looks like Obsidian has delivered exactly what the backers desired.

If you were a fan of the old Bioware and Black Isle RPGs, I strongly recommend you check this game out.

Arathi Basin in Space

Eve Online unveiled some proposed changes to their sovereignty mechanics, the mechanisms by which corporations take and hold star systems in the game.

To my surprise, the proposed mechanisms remind me of nothing so much as WoW's Arathi Basin.

In the current version of Eve sov you have to bring fleets to damage the station enough to put it into a different state. In the proposed version, you need a ship with an "Entosis Link". Channeling that link on the station for X minutes puts the station into the different state.

The major change is that one Entosis Link is all you need. Adding extra Links does not speed up the process.

You can see that this is just like capturing flags in Arathi Basin. All you need is one attacker to successfully complete a channel and the state of that node changes. Multiple attackers don't improve the speed of capture, but provide redundancy.

Now, there are differences. In the Eve version, the channelling ship must be destroyed to stop the channel, not simply attacked. The defender also has the option to start her own Entosis Link channel, which essentially "pauses" the attacker's channel.

As well, merely changing the station state is the start of the capture process in Eve. Then a countdown starts to the next stage, in which multiple command units are spawned in nearby star systems. These command units are captured using the same Entosis Link mechanism. Whichever side captures the most command units wins that stage. If the attacker wins, another countdown starts, after which the stations goes into a "freeport" mode and can be captured by anyone via Entosis Link.

In any case, much of the tactical gameplay becomes very similar to Arathi Basin. Stations need to have a defender hanging around. This defender will probably be bored most of the time, but if she leaves, the station is vulnerable to a lone attacker sneaking in and getting a quick capture.

So essentially, the amount of space a corp can hold becomes equal to the amount of space that corp can patrol. Of course, this being Eve, I expect the "patrol" to be a character on a second account stationed nearby, while the player's main account does something interesting.

The other interesting element of this new plan is that it is a very gamist system. The Entosis Links are pretty "magical". And I don't see any logical reason that station command units should spawn in nearby systems. It's clearly not very simulationist at all.

But maybe that's necessary. In my understanding, the current Eve sovereignty system is reasonably simulationist, being built around large fleets and blockading the gates in a system. However it doesn't seem to make very many people happy.

Liebster Chain

Been a while since the last post. I honestly did not mean to go so long without posting.

Talarian tagged me with this Liebster chain, so I may as well answer it. I'll post questions and tag people in a later post.

1. What is your favourite game mechanic?

Hit points.

HP are probably so ingrained that we don't really think of them as a mechanic. But they just work. They're very intuitive, they scale well for progression games, and they allow partial successes, and the ability to go back and forth. They allow for interesting risk/reward calculations. For example, a big weapon that does lots of damage but few chances to hit versus a small weapons that hit often but do little damage.

Often in the tabletop games, people decry hit points as not simulating reality, and they try to come up with other mechanics. But nothing seems to work as well as hit points.

2. Is there a character did you think would be cool when announced or first encountered, but in practice turned out terrible? Who? Why?

Not really. It might just be memory speaking, though. A good first impression might be enough to color the rest of the experience with the character. Or possibly if the character ends up really disappointing, all you remember is the disappointment.

3. If your entire life turned out to be a simulation or part of a video game, would it change your outlook on life? How?

What sort of simulation? Are we talking something like the Matrix, where there is an outside reality that I can exist in or can affect? Or a pure simulation, where I exist solely in the simulation?

If it's the Matrix, I'd probably prefer to try and escape, and see what's real. In the pure simulation scenario though, I don't think it would change anything for me. If all I can affect is the simulation, than for all intents and purposes the simulation is real for me.

4. What is your favourite colour?

Blue. I usually pick the blue team.

5. If you were an astronaut and going to space for 6 months, what personal item would you bring with you?

A good paper journal and a few of those pens that work in space. It might be redundant, given that I could easily record thoughts on a digital journal and have them transmitted and archived safely. But paper has a certain permanence to it, a feeling of weight that would be appropriate for something as monumental as going into space. You can't backspace on paper, after all.

6. Which of the Seven Deadly Sins is your favourite?

If you think about it, isn't this an odd question? It's like asking who you like better: murders or child molesters?

Plus, does anyone really ever give an answer other than Pride? I blame John Milton.

7. Is there a moment in your life where you felt you were finally "in the future"? What precipitated it?

No. Frankly, for all of my life technology has advanced in an evolutionary fashion, rather than revolutionary. I was born after the computer displaced manual calculations. What is the internet but an extension of the telephone network? There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Thousands of small incremental improvements can add up to a major improvement over all. But it's hard to feel like you are in the future when you see each of those incremental improvements pass by.

8. Cliffhangers, good technique, or annoying technique? Why?

It's a good technique when the resolution is on the horizon. For example, to end a chapter in a book, or end an episode of television.

But I don't like cliffhangers when the wait is much longer, like for the next book, or the next season. Stories need endings, and the artists who get addicted to cliffhangers often fail to end anything in a reasonable manner.

9. Has there been a game mechanic that enraged you or felt supremely unfair? What was it and why?

I don't like mechanics that break the established rules of the world without warning. There was one puzzle very early in Braid that I felt broke the rules that the game established. I don't actually remember what the puzzle was, but I had to google for the solution. As soon as I saw the answer, I uninstalled the game.

I still harbor an irrational antipathy towards Jonathan Blow because of that experience.

10. Tortoise, or the Hare?

Tortoise. Steady, incremental progress is a lot more powerful than we give it credit for. Plus, the Tortoise wins in the end.

That being said, it's interesting that Western stories always present this dichotomy. Slacker with talent, or conscientious average person. It's a real shock to the system the first time you encounter and recognize disciplined Hares in real life.

An interesting take on this issue is Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. Although theoretically a romantic comedy, it has a very interesting perspective on genius, hard work, and envy.

The WoW Token

Background

WoW is introducing a PLEX-like item: the WoW token. A player can buy it from the cash shop and sell it for in-game gold on the Auction House. The buyer can then use the item and get a month of game time.

As you know, I don't like these schemes. I simply think it is a bad idea to let strong players have a "free ride" at the expense of weaker players. WoW rests on a broad base of relatively equal subscribers, and I think that narrowing that base will end up weakening the game as a whole. As well, I don't think it's a good idea to incentivize your strong players to start gold farming in earnest. In fact, I would almost prefer WoW to sell gold directly, rather than this indirect method.

But I've lost this battle. (Though I rather doubt any game company even noticed I was fighting it.) It's clear that these sorts of items will be standard in MMOs from now on.

Specifics

Let's take a look at this specific implementation. There are some interesting nuances here.

Unlike previous implementations like PLEX, this item is not liquid. The item can only be sold once. After that it is soulbound and must be used. This means that there are no speculators involved, and the only buyers are people who actually want the game time.

As well, since the item cannot be traded, the potential for scamming is eliminated. As are external RMT-ish resellers and lotteries.

The item can only be sold through a special AH interface. Of particular note is that the player cannot set the price. Instead the game offers the player a value, and when the item sells, the player gets the offered value. In theory, the offer and sale could be different, but overall I imagine the difference will be slight.

This can be modeled as the AH purchasing the token from Player A, and then selling the token to Player B. The price offered to Player A will probably be some sort of rolling average to discourage waiting for specific windows to sell the token. For example, waiting until Saturday to sell the token because that's the day the most people are online.

I'd guess the A-side price would be something like the average price of all tokens sold on the B-side over the last 7 days. Then the B-side price would be some automatic bidding mechanism where the price increases whenever there is a sale, increases if there are no tokens available to sell, and decreases if a period of time passes without a sale.

This process probably also allows Blizzard to set a floor or ceiling on the B-side price if they deem it necessary, most likely to stop side effects from a dupe bug or similar exploit. If the price of the WoW token suddenly triples, that's likely a sign that someone has figured out an exploit.

Blizzard's clear intent is to eliminate all possible customer service issues. The process is entirely automated. There is no point where a player can exercise choice, other than to sell or not sell. So there's no opportunity for a player to make a mistake and hurt themselves.

Making Space for Kindness

Syl at MMO Gypsy has a post on kindness in FFXIV. I'd like to take a look at just what factors inspire people in FFXIV to be kind, using Syl's example of a dead solo player asking for a res.

1. First, the game needs to give players the potential opportunity to be kind. FFXIV's death mechanic could be considered "bad design". In most MMOs, if you die, you resurrect at the nearest spawn point or graveyard. In FFXIV, when you die, your option is to resurrect at your "home point". Your home point might be set to a city on the far side of the continent, because that's usually more convenient, as you get a free teleport to your home point every 10 minutes.

So dying in FFXIV can be more inconvenient than in many other games. That gives other players the opportunity to save the dead player a lot of time.

As well, FFXIV also sends high-level players back to leveling zones, and allows the spell that resurrects people to be taken cross-class. So even if you aren't a healer, you might still have the resurrect spell as one of your cross-class spells.

2. The player receiving the kindness must not be undeserving. If the dead player resurrected at the nearest town, the travel distance for the kind player is the same as the dead player. I bet that in this situation, the dead player would be called out as "lazy" and told to walk back.

In fact, if the norm in FFXIV was to change your home point whenever you switched areas, asking for a res might be considered bad. But the norm in FFXIV is to set your home point to a central convenient city.

3. The game needs to make it easy to be kind. FFXIV has the "<pos>" macro. When you put that in chat, it makes a link with your current co-ordinates. If another player clicks that link, the game puts a small flag on the map at that location. This makes it real easy for a kind player to actually find the dead player. It's relatively minimal effort.

"<pos>" is also useful to call out special targets. Like if you find a Hunt target, people often call it out in chat with the co-ordinates. Very easy to do, and very helpful.

The more effort being kind takes, the less likely people are to be kind. This also applies to costs. The higher the cost of being kind, either in actual cost or lost opportunity, the less likely people are to be kind. This is often the problem with dungeon groups.

4. Kindness works best if only a few people need to be kind. Of all the people seeing the "Needs Res" message, only one or two people need to respond. If the majority of people don't respond, the dead player still perceives the community as kind, so long as at least one person does respond.

Again, this is another problem in formal group play. In groups, usually everyone needs to be kind. Here, one unkind person can hurt the experience, and cause the person to perceive the entire community as being unkind.

Kindness is actually fairly hard to cultivate. There are several factors that need to work to get it right. I think FFXIV does a good job, but I am not sure how much is actual design, and how much is just serendipity. For example, I was just in a rather acrimonious Crystal Tower run that was pretty much as bad as anything you see in WoW (mostly because we wiped on Bone Dragon once because everyone ignored the skeleton mechanic).

Currently Playing Updates

Here's what I'm currently up to:

World of Warcraft

I'm pretty much only doing the weekly garrison quest with Coriel. I've also stopped messing around with the garrison buildings. I debating doing the legendary questline, but haven't come to a decision about that yet.

For some reason, I rolled a random Blood Elf mage and got to level 5. I'm not sure if I will keep going with it, or even why I started it in the first place.

The Old Republic

My raid team has gotten to 2/10 in Hard Mode operations (1/5 Ravagers, 1/5 Temple of Sacrifice). I'm not sure what fight we'll be working on next. Gearing for Accuracy is a huge pain in this expansion, and it really isn't helping that Sniper set gear seems to not have any.

Otherwise, one major change Bioware made was to add Companion gear to the Weeklies. So I've been slowly working on kitting my companions out, especially the droid companions. Previously, droid gear was fairly annoying to get. One interesting side-effect of this change is that I roll on very little gear in ops. It's not worth the time and effort to get gear for companions from operations anymore.

I'm also leveling a Bounty Hunter, about 2/3 Dark Side and 1/3 Light Side. Professional but a bit ruthless. I'm currently on Taris.

Final Fantasy XIV

I've decided to try and get my Relic Weapon for the Paladin class. I'm currently working on the Atma book stage, and have a grand total of one book complete. ... I don't think I'll get this done.

I took a look at the new Golden Saucer stuff. It seems pretty fun, but I'm not really into mini-games.

Diablo 3

For Season 2, I started a Monk and got to about level 25 so far. This time around, I'm trying to play in public games with other people. However, I think the matchmaking buckets are now too small, since you now have to match on difficulty, character level, and story progression. So it's pretty hard to find people.

What are you up to?

Are PvE Players Overly Entitled?

I was reading the Crowfall comments on Massively OP, and I was struck by the attitude of the more strident PvE players. There was a lot of complaining that the game was PvP, and it wasn't PvE. At this point, are PvE players becoming overly entitled?

Let's look at the major MMOs currently running:

Primarily PvE - WoW, SWTOR, FFXIV, Rift, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, TSW, EQ2, Neverwinter, LotRO

Primarily PvP - Eve Online

It's not even close. There's one major MMO which is focused on PvP. Pretty much everything else is focused on PvE.  It seems really uncharitable of PvE players to feel aggrieved that a new game is focused on a different audience.

Of course new game devs are going to try and make PvP games. That's the under-served market. It's the market where you don't have to compete with the behemoths.

I'm a primarily PvE player. I have to admit that there's a ton of options for me. My biggest problem is choosing the MMOs I don't want to play.

I kind of feel for the PvP players. If you want an MMO where PvP is more than a sideshow, you're basically limited to Eve. And if spreadsheets in space isn't your thing, you're out of luck.

For PvE players to complain about the current situation is just being churlish.

Crowfall: Kickstarter, More Thoughts

Crowfall announced its Kickstarter today. It is already more than half-way to the goal, which means there's a very strong chance it will be successful. I backed it, as I am always in favor of games that try new things. And Crowfall is especially good in that it is set up to try many new things as new campaigns with new rulesets start up.

The other interesting thing I saw was Crowfall's rules for Faction campaigns. There are three factions: Order, Chaos, and Balance. Very archetypical factions. But the win conditions are amusing. Order and Chaos win if they have the most points at the end. But Balance wins if Order and Chaos have roughly the same amount of points.

It's a very neat way of keeping the factions level, while also adhering to the lore. The only issue I can see is that the equilibrium selects for Balance. If Order or Chaos is dominant, Balance allies with the other. But if Balance is dominant, Order and Chaos cannot ally to defeat Balance. Allying only plays into Balance's goals.

Still, though, we'll have to see how it plays out.

I think Crowfall's Achilles' Heel is going to be performance and responsiveness. I know I harp on this a lot, but in some ways, performance is more important than all the creativity in the rules and game design. Games are a tactile experience, and a successful game must "feel" right when you're playing. You get that wrong, and your game dies.

Also, I think the developers should stop referencing Game of Thrones so much. It's kind of weird, in the "they're going to get sued" sort of vein. I'm not a fan of GoT [1], so it's a turn-off for me.

1. The problem with killing off all the characters the reader cares about, is that the reader is left with a book filled with characters she doesn't care about.

Account Sharing in the Mythic Race

Congratulations to Method for getting the World First Blackhand kill!

However, World First races would not be themselves without random drama. The drama this time around revolves around account sharing. More accurately, it's around the practice of transferring characters between unrelated accounts. Essentially, in order to stack classes at the very edge fights, edge guilds sometimes transfer geared alts from one player to another.

This is a clear violation of the Terms of Service. As well, Blizzard recently made an example of a couple prominent streamers for doing something similar, handing out permanent bans. So naturally there is a call for Blizzard to do the same thing to high-end raiders who transfer characters.

The argument in favor of punishment is straight-forward. Rules are rules. This practice is against the rules, and thus should be punished.

The high-end raider argument is actually rather interesting. They argue that though the actions are against the letter of the rules, they are not against the spirit of the rules.

Account sharing is banned for two reasons. First, it can often cause customer service issues. Anna uses Betty's character and then disenchants all her gear. Betty complains to customer service. The second reason is that account sharing and character transfers are often used for "boosting". Betty gives her character to Anna. Anna then power-levels the character, gets a high PvP rating, or gets a Mythic achievement for Betty. Betty is able to enjoy the rewards of such achievements, without putting in the work to earn them.

The high-end raiders point out that neither of these reasons apply. There won't be any customer service issues. There is also no boosting going on. Before the transfer, there are 20 players. After the transfer, there are the same 20 players in the raid, just one is on a different character.

They also point out that the secondary effects of a "zero tolerance" policy might be negative. Guilds might start requiring that players have and gear up even more extra characters. Or they might start to sport larger rosters, with a much larger bench that is only brought in when class stacking is required. This bench, of course, would drawn from the guilds directly below them, and they in turn would need to poach more people from the groups below. All this just for an extra ten or fifteen people who barely get to raid.

I find myself torn between the two arguments. Rules are rules, and it is essential for the rules to be applied impartially in a game. Yet at the same time, I think the high end argument is essentially right. What they are doing is not the same underlying negative behavior the rules were meant to guard against.

My Solution - Disallow Class-Stacking

My solution, as normal, is extreme. The root of the problem is class-stacking. So let's disallow class-stacking in Mythic. Mythic already has one strict restriction requiring a maximum of 20 players.

Let's add another restriction: a raid can have a maximum of 3 characters of any given class in a Mythic instance. Three druids, three paladins, three monks, three warlocks, etc.

This cuts off class-stacking at the knees. Mythic is already for the most experienced and skilled players, so another restriction is not going to faze them. It reduces the number of alts required by the high end, maybe even making life a little easier.

Then Blizzard can stop turning a blind eye to account sharing or character transfer at the high end. The rules could be applied impartially.

WoW Videos: Welcome to the Deadmines

Here's another classic WoW video by Adrian Drott, Irdeen, and Jessie Cox: Welcome to the Deadmines.



This is from before the revamped Deadmines had been revealed.

It's from the Rise to Power contest back in 2010. That contest produced a lot of good videos, including Greyfoo's Scarlet Toy. I'm not entirely certain why that contest in particular was so productive. Perhaps the topic was just restrictive enough to fuel creativity, without being too constraining.

Crowfall: Guineceans, Physics

Crowfall released some more information today: a couple of new archetypes and some information about physics.

Guineceans

I've mentioned before that I don't like short races in most MMOs. For some reason, the trend over the last few years has been to make then nasty, evil creatures.

Crowfall unveiled their short race, the Guinecean Duelist, based on guinea pigs, it looks like. I really like the background story they gave them. It makes them almost noble, and genuinely good and fun. More like Reepicheep from Narnia, rather than goblins. This race just felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I don't normally play short races, but I might make an exception for these guys.

Physics

Crowfall also revealed that they are attempting to add real-world physics to the game model. This includes collision, as well as momentum. If they pull this off, it will be very cool. However, it will be interesting to see if they can actually pull this off in a server-based PvP game.

As well, real-world physics has a lot of potential for griefing. The physics model includes projectiles, so it includes the possibility of friendly fire. One thing I do like is that the devs have outlined a plan where they can "fall back" on different options if it turns out that friendly fire causes too much grief. This plan includes turning friendly fire off entirely as the last resort.

MMOs to Play Again, Someday

I've been wandering across MMO sites that have been discussing different games. I see some stories for some games, and kind of get an urge to play them again. Though I probably won't because of the lack of time. Then there are some games which I played, and have zero desire to try again.

Would Play Again

TERA - It's still the best and most visceral combat out of all the MMOs I've played. But I don't think the surrounding elements have been improved.

The Secret World - Every time I see people raving about the content in TSW, I get the urge to play again. But then I remember the combat, and how lackluster the performance and responsiveness was.

Defiance - I found Defiance pretty fun. Just not fun enough to keep going.

Elder Scrolls Online - Again, lackluster combat killed this game for me. But I do kind of regret not getting to max level at least and seeing the story.

Not Interested

Rift - I'm not really sure why I don't want to play Rift again. I can't really point to anything the game does poorly. I even had a max level character, before the expansions. Yet I have zero desire to play Rift.

Lord of the Rings - It's just too old for me. It used to be in the "would play again" category, but then I downloaded it and started playing. Fifteen minutes later I couldn't take the graphics and performance anymore.

Age of Conan - another one which I kept thinking that I'd like to try again. Then I did, and got reasonably far leveling before I couldn't take the control scheme anymore.

What MMOs would you like to give another chance?

Randomness in Hearthstone

Syncaine commented:

The '90% of outcomes are decided by dice' aspect makes [Hearthstone] a very poor game, which IMO is the bigger problem, and got MUCH worse with the last expansion. Does anyone, winner or loser, feel good about a game being decided by the dice behind Unstable Portal? And you can't build a deck with limited luck factors, as some of the best cards (such as unstable portal) are also the big dice roll cards.

It's true that Hearthstone has a lot of cards with random effects. However, I don't agree that this specific element makes Hearthstone more or less skillful than Magic.

First, randomness is just probability. Probability can be factored into your plans. You can mitigate the randomness with tactics. Yes, sometimes you'll get very unlucky. But over time, skillful play that accounts for probability will win.

You can see this because the same people tend to win, tend to put up consistent records. That is a sure sign of a game that requires skill.

It's like poker. Poker is very random. But it's still a skill-based game. Randomness in and of itself does not exclude skill.

Second, there is a huge source of randomness present in Magic that is missing from Hearthstone: resources. Magic requires land cards in your deck. Drawing the right amount of land is a huge factor in determining victory in Magic. In fact, a good deal of skill goes into constructing the mana base for a given deck. Almost every new player makes decks with 20 land, which is a mistake (unless running extreme aggro). They need to learn that the more correct number is 24 lands. A lot of the time, the endgame in Magic can come down to who draws a threat versus who draws an unneeded land.

That source of randomness is completely missing from Hearthstone. There is no mana-screw or mana-flood in Hearthstone. Resource gain is not random, but completely predictable.

From my perspective, Hearthstone and Magic have similar amounts of randomness. Hearthstone merely moves the randomness from resource generation to gameplay effects. You can still play skillfully with random effects. You just have to take probability into account, and have backup plans for being unlucky.

Hearthstone Interactivity, Part II

Continuing on from the previous post, let's look at an alternate scheme to increase interactivity in a game like Hearthstone. This scheme is used in several CCGs. I first encountered in the Babylon 5 CCG.

Essentially, the rounds become simultaneous. Each person gets a new mana crystal at the same time, and draws a card at the same time. Then one player takes an action to cast a spell or attack. That spell/action is resolved. Then the next player takes an action. You go back and forth until both players pass in a row. At that point the round ends, and a new round starts.

This isn't quite as responsive as Magic. But it makes the game closer to something like chess, where players alternate moves. If Anna does something that requires multiple actions, Betty has a chance to interrupt Anna.

Now, this scheme does have downsides. Needing to wait for the other person to pass can lead to stalling.

As well, this scheme sometimes devalues combinations of cards. For example, let's say Anna has a 4/4 on the board. Betty has a 1/1 and a Blessing of Kings (+4/+4) in her hand. Under the old rules, Betty could play her 1/1 and boost it to 5/5, putting her in a good position. Now if Betty plays the 1/1, Anna's 4/4 will immediately attack and kill it.

Building synergistic combinations of cards is a great part of the fun of CCGs. Schemes that promote more individually powerful cards at the expense of combinations can prove to be less fun.

This scheme also makes the decision tree a lot more complex, where you have to keep in mind your opponent's possible moves. It might very well be a strength of Hearthstone that each turn is self-contained, and allows a newer player to reason out her entire turn without interference from the other side.

Like, in current Hearthstone, if you play an incorrect sequence, it's fairly obvious when you recognize what the better sequence would be. But adding the other player's moves into the mix muddles that clarity.

Still, though, the scheme outlined above is more interactive than the current version of Hearthstone, and is also more suitable for computer play.

Hearthstone Interactivity Compared to Magic

One common criticism of Blizzard's Hearthstone from more experienced gamers is that actual gameplay is rather simple and not very interactive. There is a great deal of truth to this, especially compared to Magic: the Gathering. In Hearthstone, one player takes a turn and does several actions, while the other player watches. In some ways, it's like playing chess, but each side gets to take four moves at a time.

It is possible that this simplicity has helped Hearthstone's popularity. The decision tree is far simpler, and because several actions will occur on the opponent's turn, it's not worth predicting many turns ahead. It's much easier for a new player to play a turn at a time, and still string together a successful series of moves, giving them a decent chance of winning. In a more interactive game, the new player would fail to predict her opponent's responses, and end up making mistakes more often.

But if you've played Magic, Hearthstone does come across as overly simple. The big problem is that Magic's system for interactivity works fine when playing in the real world, but is absolutely horrific when translated to a computer.

Magic uses something called the "stack". When a player plays a spell or ability, the opponent gets a chance to respond with another spell or ability. This second ability goes "on top" of the first ability, and can be responded to in the same fashion. Thus a "stack" of spells is built, and when there are no more responses, the spells begin to resolve in Last In, First Out order, starting with the last played spell at the top of the stack.[1]

For example, let's say Anna has a Grizzly Bear with 2 toughness. Betty plays Shock dealing 2 damage targeting the Bear. Anna responds with Giant Growth, giving the Bear an extra 3 toughness. The stack unwinds, and Giant Growth resolves first, making the Bear's toughness 5 in total. Shock then resolves and deals 2 damage to the Bear. That isn't enough to kill it, so the Bear stays alive.

You can see how interactive this simple example is, especially compared to Hearthstone. But when you translate this to the computer, it becomes very annoying, as Magic Online showed us. You have to ask the player if she wants to respond after every spell, and the player has to say no. Whereas in a real world game, only a few spells will actually have responses, and it's fairly easy for the opponent to interrupt and say they have a response.

The computer could skip asking responses if the player can't actually respond. However, that gives away information. Knowing that your opponent does not have a Counterspell or other response is a powerful piece of information.

This is the main reason Hearthstone is not interactive. Interactivity on the level of Magic is supremely annoying when playing a computer game.

Could Hearthstone have split the difference and made a more interactive game? Possibly. In the next post I'll outline another system used by other CCGs that might be a better translation for computer card games.

1. Yes, Magic players. This is a simplification of the stack. You can also respond to your own spells, and stop the stack as it unwinds and then add new spells to the top.

Chores, Feeling "Forced" and "Nothing to do"

I saw this excellent post by Torvald on the WoW forums. It's long, and a little hard to excerpt, but it's well worth your time.

Essentially, Torvald says that a lot of people on the forums are complaining about "having 'nothing to do' and the sense of being forced to spend all your time in garrisons doing garrison chores." But this isn't actually true, as he goes on to list the many, many activities available in current WoW. And he's right. Objectively, there are more activities available in Warlords than in any of the past versions.

So what then accounts for the general feeling of malaise? Torvald theorizes that the first few minutes of gaming session set the tone for the remainder of the session. Spending the first 15 minutes when you log in on garrison maintenance drains the player of energy, and that pushes them to log out instead of continuing on with a more fun activity.

So why then do players insist on doing those chores first? Torvald offers this explanation:

People hate the sense that a reward dangled right in front of them will be lost permanently if they fail to act. The Garrison chores are a perfect example of this. Anytime you fail to act, you give up a reward. The reward is sitting right in front of you, requiring you to do nothing more than interact with it to pick it up (mine nodes, herb garden, work orders). The more accessible a reward is to your initial log-in point, the more you will feel like the "right" way to play is to engage with it. Not doing the task to get the reward makes you feel like you're stupidly giving up a gain, and no one likes to feel as if they're playing the game "wrong." So you feel compelled mentally to engage that content. [Emphasis mine.]

He offers some suggestions about how WoW can go about remedying this. The post is a lot longer that what I've summarized, and contains some other interesting ideas. It's worth reading.

I think that in a lot of ways Torvald is right. I don't play WoW often these days, but whenever I do play, I ignore my garrison completely and jump straight into whatever activity I really want to do.

Crowfall: Pricing, Currency

Pricing

Crowfall released its planned pricing scheme. They're planning on Buy-2-Play with a cosmetic cash shop and an optional subscription. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Though the subscription looks really optional. The basic plan allows you train one character, while the subscription allows training for three.

There's also a PLEX-like item that can be traded for a month's subscription. I'm not sure about this. Crowfall's main draw is resetting worlds. Throwing this in the mix seems like it skews the resources on a single world. At least in Eve the universe is permanent.

Currency

The other interesting dev comment I saw was:

We are giving the players the tools of an economy but what becomes the defacto unit for trade will be decided by what people start selling their goods for. Could be wood, ore, ore smelted into coins, if so which ore is the one used? Fun times for sure! 

This strongly implies that there is no default currency like gold, credits, or ISK. Instead the entire game will work on barter. This also implies that there is no automated trade mechanism like an auction house.

This is a pretty interesting system. I have no idea how it will work out.

Mythic Alt Runs, Attuning Items

I think we got a little far from what I really wanted to discuss with the last post on Mythic Alt Runs. The way I see it, there are three possibilities:

1. Mythic alt runs are fine, so we don't need to do anything.
2. Mythic alt runs are unhealthy, but the cure would be worse than the disease.
3. Mythic alt runs are unhealthy, and need to be fixed.

Personally, I'm leaning towards option 2. I think the alt runs are unhealthy for the game, and hurt the experience of the top guilds. But on the other hand, that's only a very small portion of the audience. Furthermore, those people are known for doing crazy things in pursuit of World Firsts. If they didn't do alt runs, they'd probably be doing something else just as unhealthy.

Previous excesses in the top guilds, like consumable or class stacking, caused issues because it was required for lower tier guilds to do the same thing to beat those fights. In contrast, alt runs just accelerate the process of getting gear. In a couple months, a regular raid will catch up with enough gear. 

As well, any solution to alt runs would end up hitting all the other raiders in the game. This would probably hurt their experience.

I can only see two solutions to alt runs. First, Gevlon suggested that Heroic Mode use Personal Loot. This would stop alt runs for sure. However, many players--including myself--really dislike Personal Loot, especially for guild raids. It's a necessary evil for LFR and pick-up groups, since you can't trust everyone, but not something to be used for true extended content.

Attuning Items

The second solution would be a cap on how many new epics can be equipped in a given time period. For example, imagine that items had three states:

• Unbound - can be traded to other players
• Soulbound - cannot be traded to other players
• Attuned - cannot be traded to other players

Simply getting a Bind-On-Pickup item makes it soulbound. But actually equipping an item "attunes" it. The restriction would be that you can only attune 1 or 2 items a week. Once you've hit your limit, you simply can't equip new items.

There are some advantages to this scheme. You can put in a lot of different ways to get epics, without making a player "need" to do all of them. You could make a rule that the limit only applies to epics, and that gives blue items a slight advantage over epics, which might come in handy when introducing new content such as 5-man dungeons. It generally slows the pace of gear acquisition down, and spreads it out, rather than getting the majority of your items quickly and then waiting for the last few pieces to dribble in.

But it would be a big change. It might be a good change, but it's also not a change that should be done just to stop Mythic alt runs.