FFXIV: Heavensward Early Access

Early Access for FFXIV's new expansion, Heavensward, started on Friday. I had put FFXIV on the back burner for the last couple months, but I jumped in and had a look around with my paladin.

I had already done the Main Story Quest from the 2.1-2.5 patches. FFXIV requires them to unlock pretty much everything in Heavensward, save for the new race. However, I believe they've added gear to the Main Story Line that prepares you for the expansion, so you can skip the gear grind of the 2.0 endgame.

I've mostly been going through the Main Story Quest. I've completed the first zone so far. So far, it's pretty much just FFXIV, just more. Same style of quests and small stories. I did the first dungeon and first new primal. Both were pretty nice and reasonably easy. Thankfully, I'm a tank, so queues are instant. I've heard that queues for the other roles are pretty long. On the other hand, mobs in the expac seem to have a lot of hitpoints, so questing does take longer as a tank.

Heavensward is also extending the Job class stories, and giving out new abilities. I'm running out of hotbar space, though, so I'm not sure how useful this is, exactly.

In addition to the new zones and new stories, there are three new classes: Machinist, Dark Knight, and Astrologian. I haven't tried any of them yet.

The game also got a DirectX 11 version. I'm using it and it seems good. Though honestly, I don't really remember the old graphics, so I cannot really compare. The water looks really pretty now. The DX11 performance is fine for me, and my machine is about 3 years old (GeForce GTX 660 Ti).

Heavensward also introduced flying in the new zones. However, their solution to flying is the same as WoW's compromise. Each zone contains Aetheric Currents which you have to find and attune to. As well, certain quests also reward Aetheric Currents, so you have to complete those. Essentially, you have to finish exploring and questing in a zone before you can fly in it. However, since FFXIV isn't a seamless world, you unlock flying in each zone separately.

If you liked FFXIV before, you'll enjoy Heavensward. It's basically more of the same. If you didn't like FFXIV, I don't think Heavensward will change your mind.

Legendaries Are The New Attunements

I just realized the other day that Blizzard brought back attunements in Mists of Pandaria. Only, in classic Blizzard fashion, they flipped them and made them driven by rewards, rather than by punishments.

The purpose of attunements is to provide a guide through content. Something that tells the player if she is ready for new content. In The Burning Crusade, that role was played by attunements. You couldn't go to Kara until you had done the quest chain, same with T5, and T6 required defeating the bosses in T5.

Now, you can jump ahead if you want, but if you follow the Legendary questline, it paces you through the content. First you do some 5-man dungeons, then you do Highmaul. You repeat Highmaul for a few weeks, and gear up as a side-effect. By the time you've done the Legendary stages of Highmaul, you're ready for Blackrock Foundry, and the process repeats.

The reward, a Legendary item, is a very strong motivator. Pretty much every guide says to start the Legendary quest line as soon as you can. That encourages you to stick to the quest line, which matches you to content that you should be geared for.

The modern Legendaries occupy the same design space as attunements. But rather than restrictions on players, they are seen as rewards. The carrot, not the stick. Players also have the freedom to skip ahead if they know what they are doing, and there are no issues with raid composition that previous attunements used to have.

I'm kind of bemused that I didn't see this before. It's excellent design work from Blizzard. And what's most amusing and impressive is that it's the same trick Blizzard always pulls.

Knights of the Fallen Empire

Bioware revealed the trailer and some details on the latest expansion for The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire.

The trailer is really good, and certainly presents an interesting story.

Some takeaways from the day's revelations:

• Bioware is doing a modified A Realm Reborn / Mass Effect 2. Essentially, they're making a sequel on top of the existing game. New players will have an option to create a level 60 and jump into the sequel right away. In the sequel, there will be a timeskip, which will reset a lot of the character state. For example, you will probably lose your existing companions, and have to recruit new ones, as in ME2.


• New emphasis on subscriptions. Note that Bioware is not offering any one-time price for the content. You have to subscribe. On the other hand, once you subscribe once, that content is unlocked permanently, even if you unsubscribe later. So I guess new content now effectively costs $15. In some ways you can consider the original game to be F2P, but the "sequel" is a subscription game.


• Single story. Much like FFXIV, or any of Bioware's single player games, it looks like there will be one single main story that all classes play through. This probably extends to common companions as well. This does cut the companion cast down from 40 to a more manageable number, possibly allowing the player to reject some companions.


• Faction Merge. It looks like both the Sith Empire and Republic factions will be merged post-60. The new faction in the game will be purely an NPC/enemy faction. This should improve things like PvP and PvE queues. But at the same time, it will be really weird not to be Empire vs Republic.


• Small level cap increase. The new level cap increases to 65. Five levels seems like a pretty small increase for the amount of content they are proposing. Possibilities:
• Each chapter is very short.
• Leveling will take a long time with 1-2 chapters per level.
• Most of the story content will come at max level.


• Big Question: How do we get from the current story to the expansion? This is the question all TOR players are asking themselves. In the current storyline, the current bad guy, the former Sith Emperor Vitiate, is in a position of strength. Will he be defeated by the new bad guys? Is he somehow involved with the new bad guys? It does seem weird that there would be two Immortal Emperors running around.

It's a really interesting expansion and experiment. In some ways, it's surprising that Bioware just didn't go ahead and make an entirely new game. I guess they didn't want to shutter the existing game entirely, and want to leverage the existing content. Additionally, it is easier to claim the game is F2P, while still trying to make it subscription-based.

Is The Old Republic pulling A Realm Reborn?

There was a leak on the Star Wars Fallen Empire site. It was promptly taken down, but not before an screenshot made it to Reddit.

It looks like a whole new game. Though I think they aren't getting rid of the old one, just starting from the top.

Depending on how they're counting content, they say they have nine chapters ready, and plans for at least seven more. The current game only has five chapters. Now, maybe each new chapter will be shorter, like one planet in length. Still that's a lot of content.

Also, they imply that the class stories are coming back. Though maybe that's just a reference to the 1-50 class stories.

Honestly, I don't know what to think of this. If this leak is true, EA/Bioware essentially decided to double down on SWTOR, and do what Square Enix did to FFXIV. I was not expecting that at all.

To be honest, the scope of the changes in this leak is rather unbelievable. It might just be Bioware excessively hyping a more normal set of changes or new content.

The Flight Compromise

Blizzard has compromised on flying in Warlords of Draenor. They will tie flight to a meta-achievement for outdoor world content:

You’ll earn this achievement in Patch 6.2 by mastering the outdoor environment of Draenor—exploring Draenor’s zones, collecting 100 treasures in Draenor, completing the Draenor Loremaster and Securing Draenor achievements, and raising the three new Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered.

Basically, do all the outdoor content. The reward is a rylak mount and flying in Draenor for all your characters.

It's a pretty solid compromise. All content is initially experienced as the devs intend, but people will get flight eventually. It's all solo outdoor content, so it fits thematically. It only needs to be done once, so people with lots of alts get a break.

All in all, a pretty good resolution to the issue and a good model going forward.

Leveraging the Protestant Work Ethic or Elitism

One of the most interesting things about this solution is the way it harnesses a basic instinct of many gamers. I'm not sure if there's a specific term for this, but it's somewhere in-between the Protestant work ethic and elitism. Basically, for gamers, there is a link between reward and effort. Rewards should be earned. The greater the reward, the necessary effort to earn that reward must be great as well. There is a synchronicity when effort and reward match up perfectly.

The community has just spent the last few months insisting that flying is such a great reward that it cannot be removed. This creates space for Blizzard to set the bar high to earn that reward. And then the playerbase will defend that bar as correct and right. In fact, you can see a lot of this in comments to this compromise on the various forums. The people who think these requirements are too high are generally getting mocked.

Personally, I think Blizzard has nailed the effort-to-reward match-up with this compromise. It's a fair amount of work, but it's all doable solo, and nothing is too difficult. And the reward is really good. It really is the perfect amount of work for the reward. As such, they have sated that elitism/work ethic instinct of much of the playerbase. They have won themselves a lot more defenders than if the required achievement had been much harder or much easier.

Prison Games

From Azuriel, here are two hypothetical scenarios.

Scenario 1

The first one was this: you’re going to jail for ten years, but it’s a minimum security prison that will allow you to take one offline game (any DLC included) with you. But that will be the only game you get for those ten years. Which game do you pick?

I'd take something that had really good modding tools. Maybe the old Neverwinter Nights. That way I'd be able to continuously reshape the game.

Though I might just take a decent version of MS Visual Studio instead. A full-out programming language might be more interesting. Not sure if that counts as a game, though.

Scenario 2

The second scenario is similar, but this time it’s life in prison. For some insane reason, the Warden will allow you to take any three games and allow an internet connection. The parameters did not specify whether future DLC or microtransactions will be free for you, but let’s assume you can make enough money stamping licence plates to cover, say, $30/month. Which games do you pick?

This one is a lot more complicated. Life is a very long time. What games from 20 years ago are we still playing? What game do we expect to still be running 20 years from now? Also, if the company comes out with a sequel, does it count as the same game? For example, SE has FFXIV now, and is essentially sun-setting FFXI.

Heck, what game companies do I still expect to be around 20 years from now?

I almost want to choose the same games as the first scenario, just because I can guarantee those games or programs will still run.

I guess I'd pick WoW or Eve Online. They're among the oldest, and the most likely to still be in existence. I'd think about Everquest, but I'm not sure how stable the company Daybreak is. FFXIV might be a choice, but I think SE will eventually go the sequel route and bring out FFXX or something.

A FPS might be a decent choice, as I don't really care about MOBAs. But I'm not sure that any one FPS will live long enough.

Another good option would be an online casual game hangout. One which plays traditional games like poker or chess. Those games have stood the test of time, and you're really just hanging out to chat while you play.

So my choices would be WoW, a casual card or board game hangout, and an offline moddable game from Scenario 1 (or Visual Studio). That way I'd at least have a backup if the online games ceased to exist.

Cosmetic Versus Content Pricing

Hearthstone introduced a new Hero: Magni Bronzebeard. This is basically a replacement for the current Warrior, Garrosh. As far as I can tell, Magni is entirely cosmetic. The warrior ability is identical, as are all the existing cards. Magni just replaces the hero artwork and sound effects. Magni is being sold for $10.

I thought that this price was entirely reasonable. Magni is cosmetic, and is totally unnecessary. So why not charge a premium?

I was quite surprised when I saw the community reaction to Magni's pricing. Though honestly, when it comes to F2P games, I should just expect that the community will always complain, regardless of what the pricing actually is.

But seriously, isn't it better for the content that is sold to be cheap, and the cosmetics be expensive? Shouldn't a player on a limited budget be directed to content, like packs of cards or Arena, rather than pushing her towards unnecessary cosmetic items?

The problem, however, is that consumers look at the individual transactions, rather than the game as a whole. Content is considered to have more value than cosmetics, so inexpensive content is seen as a good bargain. Meanwhile expensive cosmetics is seen as poor value, and the consumer gets angry at the company for "gouging".

But pricing according to perceived value would have a negative effect on the F2P model. Content would be expensive, and cosmetics would be cheap. It would actually be very expensive to play the core game, becoming closer to the Pay-2-Win complaints. The base level of money needed to play would skyrocket, while the optional value extracted would be quite small. F2P games operate on the opposite principle, that the base level of money needed is low, while the optional value that can be extracted is high and variable. This is the very element that allows players to pay what they want and they can afford.

If a player has a budget of only $10, it's better that she buys 5 rounds of Arena, rather than 5 cosmetic items. In the long run, spending money on content will be more useful. Pricing cosmetics more expensively pushes the limited budget player towards content, as the better value matters more to her.

High profit cosmetic items allow content to be sold relatively cheaply. If you're a fan of F2P games, you should be applauding Magni's pricing. In the end, it's much better for all players that content is cheap and cosmetics are expensive, rather than the reverse.

STWOR: Class Story Comparison

This post contains significant spoilers for all the class stories in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Overview

Having finished all eight class stories, I thought I would take a look at all the stories together. First, here are my overall scores, and links to each individual post. There were roughly four tiers of quality. Within each tier the order is pretty arbitrary, and mostly personal preference.

Score	Class
90%	1. Imperial Agent
80%	2. Jedi Consular 3. Sith Warrior 4. Jedi Knight 5. Republic Smuggler
70%	6. Sith Inquisitor 7. Republic Trooper
60%	8. Bounty Hunter

All the stories did succeed at a basic level. They all felt like their class was supposed to. The Smuggler story involved evading the law, making questionable deals and witty banter. The Bounty Hunter story was about hunting bounties. The Agent story was a spy story. So from that perspective all the class stories were a success.

Good Common Elements

These are two major patterns I noticed that made some class stories better.

1. Constant Supporting Cast

The better stories tended to have a constant supporting cast throughout the chapters. For example, Agents had Keeper and Watcher Two. Troopers had General Garza. The Jedi had Satele Shan and the Jedi Council. Having the supporting cast stay somewhat constant from chapter to chapter helped keep a feeling of continuity, as well as allowing the player to really become attached to some characters.

I think the Bounty Hunter was hurt the most by this, as the supporting cast completely changed from chapter to chapter.

2. Good Villains

By and large, the stories with better villains were at the top of the list. Darth Jadus, Hunter, Darth Baras, and the Sith Emperor were all excellent villains, and greatly enhanced their respective stories. On the other hand, Darth Thanaton, General Rakton, and Jun Seros were weak villains, and dragged their stories down.

Imperial Agent Excellence

In my view, the Imperial Agent story is the strongest. It does all the basics competently and had an excellent supporting cast and villains. It was also the only story to attempt to be "more" than just a Star Wars story.

If someone said "Give me a story about a Jedi Consular", you'd get the Consular story. Ditto the Sith Warrior and the Jedi Knight. These stories had themes, but the themes did not drive the story. Instead the "archetype experience" drove the story. The Knight story is the Knight story because that's what you'd expect the Knight's story to be about.

The Agent story, on the other hand, sought to answer a question. The United States Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." The Agent story asks what happens if that is not true, what if some men are inherently more powerful (by orders of magnitude) than others. How do the powerless act?

The Agent story had some interesting answers, especially in Chapter 3. But every chapter, including the prologue, touched upon this theme in some fashion.

This theme is also not specific to the Agent. The Sith classes could have looked at the same theme from the other side. But starting with a stronger theme, and then wrapping the Agent "experience" around that theme, led to a stronger story in general.

Conclusions

That's a quick overview of what I thought of the class stories in SWTOR. They're all decent. But the Imperial Agent story is a cut above, being driven by a unique theme, as opposed to just the archetype experience.

SWTOR: Smuggler Done!

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

I finished up the last class story: the Republic Smuggler. I played a somewhat Light Side female Scoundrel DPS.

The Smuggler story is pretty good. It is more of a comedy than the other stories, with lots of funny lines. The main NPCs are quite good, as are all your companions. Special mention goes to Bowdaar, the Wookie, who is just awesome. I used Bowdaar as my main companion pretty much as soon as I got him. It just nails the Han Solo and Chewbacca dynamic, and has some brilliant lines:

"Stealth? Why do I need stealth? I have a Wookie."

Ability-wise, the Scoundrel was quite fun. Stealth and punching people, while pulling out a shotgun for special moves. Dirty Kick is the greatest stun in MMO history, and just so perfectly Smuggler. (You kick the enemy in the crotch, he keels over for a few seconds.)

The bad guys are all very well done. Skavak, Rogun, and the Voidwolf were good antagonists.

It does feel like this story was primarily written for a male character, though. There seemed to an above-average number of female NPCs, probably written as [Flirt] targets. I don't know if that is entirely true, though, or if I am just seeing a pattern where none exists.

There were a reasonable number of [Flirt] targets for the female smuggler. Special mention for the Voss romance. About 3/4 of the way through the planet, the NPC suddenly mentions he has a wife. Though you have the option of continuing to flirt, you can try to backtrack out. But it's too late, as the NPC has already fallen in love, and the rest of the planet is very awkward. (Bowdaar laughs at you a lot here.) It was pretty funny and well-written.

If there is a flaw in the Smuggler story, it's that it is not really memorable. There's no deeper level to the story. It's like a popcorn flick. You go to the theater and you enjoy yourself thoroughly. But the moment you step outside, the movie is gone from your mind.

I'd class it in the same tier as the Consular, Warrior, and Knight stories, though closer to the bottom. It doesn't have the flaws of the Inquisitor, or Trooper, even if it isn't as memorable.

Wildstar Goes F2P

The latest news is that Wildstar will be converting to Free-2-Play this fall. It's sort of sad that it never got traction, but at the same time it is sort of expected.

I played Wildstar in the Beta, but never signed up after launch. Pretty much everyone has theories about why Wildstar failed. Personally I blame the swearing on level up.

Another explanation might be that the default gameplay action combat style was too intense for a long-term MMO. Or that the base difficulty was pitched too high, making group content really difficult. Or that the attunements required for endgame were overly grindy. Or that the classes were uninspired and boring.

(But really, it was the bleeped profanity.)

However, it was a game worth trying, and at least F2P means that a lot of people will get to try it out. The housing system is supposed to be excellent.

I really wonder if we'll ever see a Sci-Fi MMO setting again. At least a third-person single-character style one. Other than Eve Online, the track record for Sci-Fi MMOs is pretty dismal.

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.