No Flight, Part 2

Azuriel feels that Blizzard has unstated reasons behind cutting flight:

So here’s my theory: Blizzard is removing flying to cut future production costs. 

In a world without flying, or restricting flying to specific areas, Blizzard is free to replace large swaths of the map with 2D sprites and skyboxes. This is the exact reason why you still cannot fly in Silvermoon City: the city outside the narrow roads simply doesn’t exist. Stormwind had the same issue prior to Cataclysm, if you’ll recall, but they did spend the manpower to construct a fully 3D space. They had to, because otherwise every character with a flying mount would immediately see the seams of the gameworld.

I think resorting to conspiracy theories is excessive. Let's just take Blizzard at face value, and accept that they don't like the way flying changes the game.

It's not like this attitude towards flight comes out of the blue. In TBC, the very expansion which gave us flying, we also got Sunwell Isle. Sunwell Isle was a max-level open world questing area where flight was prohibited. Raids and instanced content have never permitted flight. Some of them, like Firelands, were large enough and open enough to allow it.

PvP zones have never allowed flight. If the PvE gameplay issues with flight aren't bad, why are the PvP ones so much worse?

So from the very beginning, max-level content has not really coexisted with flight. Occasionally it's allowed, but very often it's prohibited.

However, I really liked this article from Matthew Rossi at Blizzardwatch. He argues that Blizzard "is absolutely right — flying detracts from gameplay in a host of ways. But taking it away from the player base is worse."

Flying is such a great reward, precisely because it is so powerful, that players love it. The sense of freedom, of being unbound from the 2-D world is very potent. For that reason alone, it should be kept as a reward for reaching max-level, and we should just live with gameplay issues.

I think this point of view makes a great deal of sense. That the sheer reward of flying outweighs the gameplay issues it brings.

Blizzard should bring back flying for max-level content, but try to make it a bit less convenient, while keeping as much of the feeling of reward as possible. In particular, I would single out the ability to hover as what causes the most gameplay issues with flight. I wonder if simply having flying mounts always be moving forward would be enough to keep them in check.

No Flying in Warlords Entire

Blizzard confirmed that there will be no flying in WoD for the entirety of the expansion.

As I said in the discussion of the subscription drop, we can infer what Blizzard's numbers are telling them by their subsequent actions. This is a clear signal that Blizzard thinks that people will not unsubscribe because of the lack of flight. That they believe the expansion is stronger and more attractive without flight, and that their internal numbers are backing that view.

That in turn implies that for most people, lack of flight is not a deal-breaker. 

Personally, as I've mentioned before, I don't think flight has been good for the game. In fact, going over my older posts, I found this post from The Burning Crusade, about two weeks after I hit 70 and got my flying mount. It's kind of amusing to look back at it now, as it nailed the play-style changes and some concerns for future development:

Now with a flying mount, [questing is] very different. 

Step 1: Aerial Recon - Scout out the location and find the quest mob.
Step 2: Paradrop in - Hover directly above the quest mob and dismount so you fall to the ground right there.
Step 3: Kill the target, get the quest item.
Step 4: Jump out - mount up and take off. 

Very commando-style gameplay. It's interesting because there are a lot of design implications for this playstyle. 

All in all, I think it would have been better if flight had never been added or if it had been designed differently.

For example, imagine if you could not hover. If your mount was limited to the ground until you had moved forward for X seconds in a straight line (getting X momentum) and only then could you take off. And then your mount was always moving forward, so you could not hover in place, but had to circle around.

Basically make the true commando-style gameplay inconvenient, but still allow flight for travelling long distances and generally allowing freedom in the air.

All in all, the only real surprise in Blizzard disallowing flight for the full expansion is that it once again proves they are willing to cut significant existing mechanics if they feel it is damaging the game. Flight, reforging, and even the auction house in D3 are all examples.

Itemization Changes in 6.2

Blizzard released a Dev Watercooler on itemization changes coming in Patch 6.2. Here are some thoughts on the changes.

1. More Consistent and Visible Personal Loot

Whenever a group gets items, a certain percentage is "wasted" and ends up disenchanted. Because group loot systems can funnel loot to the people who need it, their wasted percentage is a lot lower than the wasted percentage of Personal Loot.

Blizzard appears to be increasing the amount of Personal Loot given out in order to compensate for increased wastage.

They're also moving to a more consistent model where each boss will drop roughly the same amount of loot for the group, rather than it being truly independent. For example, right now each person might have a 24% chance to get loot, which depending on RNG, could lead to anywhere from 3 to 9 pieces dropping. In the new system, exactly 6 people in the group will get loot, and the item they get is then determined from the eligible loot for their specialization.

As well, there looks to be a new UI element which shows who won loot on this boss, making loot more of a group experience.

Overall, these changes to Personal Loot are good, and will improve its attractiveness. Ideally, Personal Loot becomes the system of choice for pickup groups.

2. Secondary Stats

I'm not sure I really understand what Blizzard is trying to get at here.  I think that they're saying that right now, secondary stats on gear looks like:

+100 Haste
+100 Mastery

My guess is that they want to do more things like:

+150 Haste
+50 Mastery

I don't think this will make a lot of difference. Players will just throw it into the stat weights at Wowhead and make a list of the best gear.

3. Item Level Ramp

As you go deeper into the raid, the level of items will rise. So reward continues to match difficulty.

Unless Blizzard is planning to greatly increase the size of the loot tables, I don't see the point of this. If your boots only drop from Boss A, does it matter if they're slightly higher or lower in ilvl than your gloves?

Plus, what this will probably means is that the Holy Paladin weapon (assuming Blizzard manages to remember it) will drop off an early boss, while the good healer weapon will drop off the last boss and have a higher ilvl. At least this means that Holy Paladins will get a better upgrade sooner if the raid continues into the next difficulty.

On the whole, I think the better solution to people skipping end bosses is to have specific bosses drop specific slots for all classes. Like one boss always drops boots, the next drops chests, and the last boss drops weapons. Kind of like Vanilla. That way no one wants to skip the last boss as they all want to get the items for that slot.

Conclusions

The Personal Loot changes are good changes. I don't think the other two changes are bad, but I doubt they will make any real difference.

Edit: There does seem to be a bit of a contradiction between Points 2 and 3. Point 2 wants to make the choice between Shoulder A and Shoulder B more interesting. But Point 3 wants the shoulder that drops later in the instance to be better. So unless the loot tables increase significantly, or maybe secondary stats become random (which is effectively the same thing), I think the two changes are working at cross-purposes to each other.

SWTOR: Bounty Hunter Done!

This post contains significant spoilers for the Bounty Hunter story in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

With the renewed 12x bonus, I finished up the Bounty Hunter story. I played as a somewhat Dark Side female Powertech DPS. I was trying for the consummate professional at first, but slipped over to pure brute Dark Side for a few planets.

If I had been in charge of SWTOR development (and had unlimited time and money), I would have scrapped the Bounty Hunter story and sent it back for a complete rewrite. It's not that the story is bad, precisely. It's serviceable, reasonably decent, and does cover the basics of bounty hunting pretty well. You're a hunter, here's your target, go get them.

The story is just not good enough, though. There is no over-arching theme or purpose. In each chapter, you're working for a different patron, who sends you after different, unrelated targets.

A lot of the problem also comes from the fact that a hunt is pretty much how every quest in every MMO works. Someone points out a target, you go and kill the target and they give you a reward. However, every other story has some extra dimension to the request. The bounty hunter is missing that extra dimension. So it feels like every other story in every other MMO, just "less".

The other class stories all had flaws. But those flaws were fixable. The underlying structure for those stories was sound. In my view, there's no real way to improve the Bounty Hunter story outside of a complete rewrite.

I'm not really sure what a better Bounty Hunter story would have been. Perhaps something that delved more deeply into the Mandalorians, maybe with you ultimately leading a new Mandalorian clan.

There are a lot of good elements in the current BH story. The crew and their interactions in particular are very good. One interesting item is that Mako and Torian are the romances, but there also seems to be an option to set them up with each other.

Many of the individual planet class missions are good, with interesting targets. The final mission is very good as well. But the individual planet class missions feel unrelated to each other. The only relationship is that your patron wants these targets.

For smaller flaws, the main antagonist is not that great. You don't interact a lot, he's just an image on the holo who occasionally sends incompetent Jedi after you.

The companion Gault is also a flaw. Not so much in his character, as he's a great character. But he's a target who convinces you to let him fake his death and join your crew. Yet one of the bounty hunter "fantasies" is to be the ultimate hunter, the one who always gets her target. The game forces you to violate this ideal, forces you to avoid killing or capturing one of your targets. No matter how awesome you are in the rest of the story, Gault will always be a blemish on your record, even if no one else knows about it.

Then we come to Skadge. Skadge is probably the most hated companion in the game. He's basically scum of the earth with no redeeming values. The bounty hunter has no reason to take him along. It's like Bioware wanted him to be the equivalent of Khem Val. But the Inquisitor needs muscle, and an ancient Sith monster that eats Force users is an awesome companion. But Skadge is just dumb, psychopathic muscle. The Bounty Hunter is already the muscle in the group, and doesn't really need an insolent extra.

Skadge really needs something in his character to make him attractive to the bounty hunter. Perhaps something like playing up the dumb, evil part of things, but have Skadge look upon the Bounty Hunter as an elder brother or sister.

In any case, that's what I thought of the Bounty Hunter story. It's certainly serviceable, and it does fulfill the Boba Fett fantasy at a basic level. Individual planets are pretty good. But as a whole it pales in comparison to all the other class stories in the game.

SWTOR: Agent Videos

I found a couple of fan-made Imperial Agent tribute videos or trailers, both featuring the female Agent. This one is really good and covers the start of Dromund Kaas. There are minor spoilers for that part of the story.



This one, by the same author, covers the prologue in Hutta. It does spoil the twist in the Hutta storyline, though, so you may want to avoid it if you're planning on playing an Agent in the near future.

Legendary Ring Issues

There has been a lot of controversy over the design of the upcoming Legendary Rings in patch 3.2. Here is the current ability of the healing ring:

Use: Awakens the powers of Sanctus rings worn by you and your allies, granting (772/100)% Versatility for 15 sec. 

For the duration of this effect, all damage and healing received is divided evenly among empowered allies. (2 min shared cooldown)

As you can see, invoking your ring also triggers the rings of your fellow raid members. This is pretty controversial, because different classes might like to trigger their ring at different times. As well, it feels like you are giving up control of your Legendary item to someone else, be it the raid leader or just another player. Players really do not like to give up control.

The major issue with this ring though, is something slightly different: The cooldown is too short.

This ability is clearly modelled after Bloodlust. Bloodlust (and its variants) is an iconic raid-wide ability. It has a very noticeable sound and graphic, and is a very important part of raiding. But Bloodlust also has a 10-minute cooldown. This means it's only used once a fight (maybe twice on the very long fights). Thus there is some coordination, saving it for a specific phase. But at the same time, that coordination is limited. You just says "Lust at the start of Phase 3", or whenever it is necessary.

A two minute cooldown ability, on the other hand, needs to be used as much as possible. Ideally it should be used whenever it comes off cooldown, to maximize the uptime. That means lots of coordination to get the timing right. As well, if the ability is triggered incorrectly once, it throws of the entire schedule.

If I was designing the Legendary ring for a raid-wide effect, I would do something like:

Use: Increases haste by 30% for all party and raid members within 100 yards. Lasts 40 sec. 

For the duration of this and similar effects, you gain Legendary Heroism, granting (772/100)% Versatility. All damage and healing received is divided evenly among allies empowered with Legendary Heroism. 

Allies receiving this effect will be unable to benefit from similar effects again for 10 min.

Basically, this ability is "Improved Bloodlust". You get the ability to invoke Bloodlust if you don't have it already. But now you become even more powerful under the effects of Bloodlust.

This allows Bloodlust to do the heavy lifting in terms of how the ability works in the raid. Everyone already understands how Bloodlust works, and how it should be coordinated. It really only activates once a fight, but it activates during the most important part of the fight, usually the most dangerous phase.

I think a design like this is just as "Legendary" as the current design. But it utilizes existing mechanics, making it easier to understand and coordinate.

WoW's Subscription Drop

After spiking up to 10 million subscribers last quarter, WoW has fallen back down to 7.1 million subscribers. As usual, everyone in the community takes this as evidence that whatever new element in Warlords of Draenor that they dislike is ruining the game. (I blame Active Mitigation personally, clearly inconsistent tanking is driving people away.)

I think the most likely explanation is that the Warlords of Draenor nostalgia trip plus the 10th Anniversary got a lot of old players to give the expansion a shot. They played through the expansion, then realized that WoW is more or less the same game as when they left. So they quit again, for pretty much the same reasons as before.

Of course, there could be other reasons. The big element that everyone is mentioning is Garrisons. I'm not a major fan of garrisons, but at the same time I don't think they're that bad. They're fairly low maintenance, and easily ignorable, in my view.

If I had to choose to an element which "caused" the drop, I would say that many new elements are combining to weaken guilds, and make the game excessively transient. Things like the Party Finder, cross-server groups, Personal Loot, and maybe even Flexible raiding. In my mind, guilds are a major element in making the game "sticky". Not being in a guild, not being in a community where you see the same people on a regular basis, makes it much easier to drop away.

Of course, we don't have access to data on who exactly is leaving. Blizzard does though, and the best way to find out what caused the drop is to see how Blizzard reacts. The classic example here is Cataclysm. Blizzard made dungeons very difficult, Ghostcrawler put out a post defending that difficulty, sub numbers came out, and two weeks later all the dungeons got severely nerfed.

So we will see what happens with Patch 6.2. Thus far, it looks like Blizzard's main focus is trying to get people to participate in multiple types of content. To me, that implies that players are "silo-ing", focusing on only one part of the game like raids, PvP, or pet battles. Players are not venturing out to try other aspects, even as they are becoming bored with their chosen activity.

SWTOR: Ziost Finale and Dailies

This post contains major spoilers for the ending of Ziost.

Yesterday, Bioware unlocked the final part of Ziost. It was a pretty interesting outcome.

The Sith Emperor Vitiate won. He consumed all life on the planet Ziost. What this means in terms of future story is unknown, but it looks like Bioware are setting up Vitiate as the major villain going forward. I imagine the next expansion will focus on him.

Ziost also has a new daily area on the ruined planet. It is unusual because it is empty. There are no mobs other than a couple of champion sith monstrosities wandering around. The daily quests involve recovering data from dead bodies, crashed probes, and destroyed temples.

It's very atmospheric, and a neat change of pace.

In some ways, this is the most frustrating part of TOR. They've cut back significantly on the best part of TOR: the multiple unique stories. TOR went from eight class stories, to two faction stories, and now only has one combined story.

But at the same time, they do try new and interesting things like Ziost. It's a real pity that they do not have the budget they originally had. I think the current team might have been able to do a lot with more resources.

Finishing Things

Lately, I've had a hard time finishing games and television shows. I start them, play or watch for a little bit, but then suddenly stop and switch to something else.

The big game here is Pillars of Eternity. I'm about 20 hours in, and I just stopped. I'm not even sure why, as I was really enjoying the game up to that point. I also have a level 96 Warrior in WoW, a level 7 Templar in ESO, a level 39 Bounty Hunter in TOR, and a Season 3 barbarian in Diablo 3. Not to mention I still haven't finished Transistor.

And then for some reason I downloaded TERA again on this weekend.

I'm also doing the same thing with a bunch of shows I'm watching. I'll get mid-way through and just stop. Even if I'm enjoying the show. Heck, one of the shows on my watch list is at 11 episodes out of 12, and I'm simply ignoring the last episode.

I think part of the issue is that my main games are MMOs, which never really finish and encourage you to play at a low pace but on a regular basis. For example, regardless of whatever other games I'm playing, I'll still log in to TOR twice a week to raid. I'm also still working on the Legendary chain in WoW, and that takes a little bit of effort every week.

Perhaps I've fallen out of the habit of focusing on a single piece of entertainment, and am just jumping around from game to game. It's kind of annoying though. I want to finish Pillars, to finish Transistor, to finish many of these shows on my list.

SWTOR: Ziost and Patch 3.2

The Old Republic dropped patch 3.2 yesterday. It has a continuation of the Shadow of Revan storyline, this time going to Imperial world of Ziost. In a somewhat unusual turn of events, the very last part of the story is locked, and will only open on May 4th.

Of course, this was not communicated well, so everyone was confused when the questline abruptly ended.

I've only done the Imperial side on my sniper. On the whole, I thought the story was okay. It's on par with the rest of SoR, and not as good as the original stories or Imperial Makeb. It's very interesting for the Imperial Agent, as they introduced a new character who parallels the Light Side Agent in a lot of ways.

One thing I've realized is that I don't really like stories with supremely powerful villains. Villains work best when they are more powerful than the heroes, but within the same "order of magnitude", so to speak. The Sith Emperor Vitiate is so powerful that I don't really see how you could beat him and still feel "fair", as opposed to defeating him because the author let him be defeated.

Heh, maybe with the May the Fourth celebrations it will be revealed that we fling Vitiate forward in time and he becomes the villain for the new movies.

Otherwise the patch was pretty decent. Bioware added a new system for cosmetic outfits. It's interesting, because before this patch, you got your cosmetic outfit by slotting components into the armor shell. There was an in-universe explanation for it. Now, the cosmetic system is purely gamist, with no attempt at explaining how it works in-universe.

They also nerfed a few bosses that were unusually hard, and blocking progress. My group managed to knock out HM Bulo, so we're now at 3/10 in Hard Modes.

The only thing I dislike about the patch is that the sound and visuals on Penetrating Blast got messed up. PB normally fires 4 shots in a volley. But now you only see and hear one or two shots. The ability still seems to working correctly for damage and procs. But it's surprising how important hearing those four shots was for maintaining the rhythm of the rotation.

Holy Paladin Weapons

I've picked up my Holy Paladin again last week and have been doing LFR and working on the Legendary Quest.

In 2011, Blizzard asked for some class feedback. Here's what I wrote at the time:

About the only important quality of life issue I have is placement of weapons on raid bosses. Sometimes I think that Blizzard forgets that Holy Paladins are the only healing spec which cannot use staves or daggers.

How has Blizzard improved on this issue?

Well, I took a look at the Blackrock Foundry loot tables, to figure out which boss I need to use a coin on to increase my chances of getting a weapon.

There is not a single Holy Paladin weapon in all of LFR Blackrock Foundry! There's a staff, a wand, and a dagger.

Seriously Blizzard, this is amateur hour. Is it really so hard to write a tool/script/test that checks the loot table and spits out any spec/slot combinations which are missing?

Steam's Mod Marketplace

Valve has come up with a plan to allow mod-makers to sell mods on Steam. By and large the community reaction has been unfavorable. Many gamers are unhappy that something which was free, is now going to cost them money. On the other hand, a lot of industry players feel that it's only right that mod creators are paid for their efforts.

My thoughts are mixed. In addition to theoretical changes, there are also practical issues with Valve's plan.

Practical Issue - Revenue Split

The first issue is the revenue split that Valve is using. Valve takes 75% and the mod creator gets 25%. Now, Valve is probably giving a portion of their take to the original game creators, which is reasonably fair. I've seen estimates that ultimately Valve gets 25%, the game creator gets 50% and the mod maker gets 25%.

I don't think this is a sound plan in the long run. I remember reading an article on startups (by Joel Spolsky, I believe) and he gave the advice that if you make a startup with partners, you should split the ownership 50-50 (or 50%+1, 50%-1 for control issues). At 50-50, both of you are truly partners, truly financial equals. Trying to apportion responsibility and unequal ownership makes individuals resentful. In the long run that creates more problems than being a little over-generous in ownership.

In the same way, I think that Valve should strongly consider a system where the game creator and mod maker are treated as equals, as partners. A split like Valve 20%, game creator 40%, and mod maker 40% would be better. You give up a small amount of revenue, but the mod maker is an equal, a full partner instead of a junior partner.

Practical Issue - Copyright

Most mods are not compiled. That means that it is really easy for other people to copy the mods. Piracy in itself will be a problem for mod makers, but people reselling other people's mods, or creating derivative works, on Steam will be a problem for Valve.

Hopefully Valve puts up a reasonable barrier of entry for mod makers. Something along the lines of Apples $100 dev licence would be a good start.

Theoretical Issue - Open Source

Right now, mods operate much like the Open Source software community does. It isn't explicit, especially with licensing, but it's very similar. The thing is that, by and large, the Open Source movement works. In fact, it's very arguable that in a lot of areas, open source software has swallowed up closed source software.

I think the mod community will split into two. One that is for-profit using Steam's marketplace, and one that is open source, using the current distributions. Mods may even be explicitly licensed with the GPL or similar.

I think the open source mod community will end up crowding out the for-profit community. They will have more users and be able to hit critical mass a lot easier than the for-profit mods will. As well, most mods, unless they rely heavily on artwork, can be duplicated fairly easily. Think of how many different DPS parsers exist. If a for-profit mod becomes popular, I imagine that a free mod with the same functionality will appear quite quickly.

Perhaps ultimately most mods will be free and open-source, but a Premium version with a better user interface or extra options will be sold on Steam. Very similar to how many current open source programs are sold.

Conclusions

There is nothing wrong with selling mods on Steam for money. In fact, it's probably a good thing that mod makers get rewarded for their time and effort.

However, in the long run I don't think it will make much difference. The pressures that push towards open-sourcing software will exist in the mod community. Most mods are written not for profit, but "to scratch an itch" for the modder. That same philosophy will still exist.

This does not really apply to artwork-heavy projects, or massive mods which essentially change the game into something new and require a lot of content creation time. This might very well be a good platform to sell those types of mods. But realistically, there aren't that many of those mods made.

Of course, now that money is involved, anything that requires a team is going cause massive organizational headaches for amateurs. You may still see massive mods being released for free, just because everyone who worked on it getting nothing and doing it for fun is easier than trying to pay individuals for their contributions.

Ultimate Fight Final Fantasy XIV

I'm not really sure why SquareEnix decided to make this video for FFXIV. But it's pretty hilarious.



The best part is Thancred being Thancred.

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).