Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I will try to avoid major spoilers, but this is a discussion of the new movie. There may be spoilers, especially in the comments.

The Force Awakens is a competent but unimaginative movie. It's like Disney asked "What are the elements of a Star Wars movie?" and then went down the list and added in equivalents of each item.

The prequels were bad movies, significantly worse than The Force Awakens. But even they had a sense of vision that TFA lacks. Lucas was trying to tell a story, to tell something new. To add something to his universe. While watching TFA, I got the sense that this movie was so insistent on reminding you that it is a Star Wars movie, that it forgot to be its own thing.

As a result, TFA comes off as a pale copy, a second-rate Star Wars. That's true of many elements in the movie as well. The First Order is a second-rate Empire, Kylo Ren is a second-rate Darth Vader, Jakku is a second-rate Tatooine, BB-8 is a second-rate R2-D2. There are a lot more parallels, but that gets into spoiler territory.

But a second-rate Star Wars is still a pretty good movie.

There are many good things about TFA. The two new leads, Rey and Finn, are solid, engaging characters. Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, and pretty much steals every scene he's in.

I think Finn is a bit of a missed opportunity. He's an ex-Stormtrooper, but the film went to great lengths to make sure you know he's a good guy and never did anything bad. He might have been far more interesting as a redeemed bad guy.

As for Rey, she's a decent heroine. The problem with Rey is that she is ... excessively competent.  (Though this is probably mandatory for a female lead in an action movie these days.) Compare her character to Luke Skywalker from the first movie. The problem is that she has no path to growth. I rather think the only way she'll become interesting is if she falls to the Dark Side.

I should note that complaints about Finn and Rey are minor at best. In many ways they were the best part of the movie.

But I keep returning to the part about "adding something". The really good works in an extended universe make that universe richer and more interesting. As an example, take Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy. Those books may not have been the greatest literature but they gave us Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Chiss, among many other elements. The Force Awakened really does not expand Star Wars in any direction.

As well, I think that I am not a fan of J.J. Abrams, at least his movies. So far, he tends to string together frentic action scenes instead of making an actual movie. It's like "action sequence, glue scene, action sequence, glue scene, repeat". It's not as bad as the atrocity which was Star Trek: Into Darkness. However, I think TFA would actually have been better with fewer action sequences.

To be fair, I think a lot of modern action and sci-fi movies have the same problem. I blame the extensive budgets of modern films. The the older films couldn't afford to make the entire film a special effects extravaganza, so they saved up for a few really key sequences. But now budgets are such that directors can and do go crazy, and I think the films suffer for it.

In any case, that's what I thought of The Force Awakens. It's decent enough, but unimaginative. If you were asked what a Star Wars movie "designed by committee" would look like, you'd probably come up with The Force Awakens.

Rotations as a Proof of Competence

Continuing on from the previous discussion of Proof of Competence, asking for spec is not the best question. It's a decent question. It's easy to answer and verify. And it does tend to give the information you're looking for. But there are better questions.

In particular, asking for rotation is a much better question. Someone who can rattle off the correct rotation is very likely to be a decent player.  (Rotation here also means ability priority list, not just strict rotation.) The problem is that asking for the rotation is a harder question to answer and verify. You can't just inspect the player and see their rotation.

But what if you could?

In WoW, there are a number of mods which will display the next ability you should use. Some also show the next few abilities of the optimum sequence. You still have to hit the right buttons, but these mods basically show you the best theorycrafted rotation as it happens.

What if this type of UI element, this "Rotation Helper", was part of the base game?

The idea here is that the game doesn't fill out the rotation on its own. Instead, you would have a screen where you could drag abilities into a priority list. Essentially construct your own rotation. The rotation you constructed would then be displayed, and you could hit your buttons to match.

Another player could then inspect you, and just like they see your gear today, they could see the rotation loaded in your Rotation Helper. And perhaps you could send and receive rotations from other players or third parties. If Sally is another Retribution paladin in your raid and is doing better than you, perhaps you can ask her for her rotation and compare it to yours, or replace yours with hers.

The hard part, though, is to construct a Rotation Helper which is simple enough to use, but also powerful enough to construct a decent priority list. A lot of abilities require things like "use when this buff reaches 4 stacks" or "use when this debuff is about to drop off". This kind of stuff is easy to do in code, in a programming language, but is harder to create in a GUI. A Rotation Helper is a non-trivial design problem.

This Rotation Helper wouldn't really help with reactive abilities like healing, or tank cooldowns, or interrupts. But it would significantly help with DPS.

Of course, there are concerns that this type of UI element is "playing the game for you". But such helper mods already exist, and a decent amount of high end players use them already. These type of mods help those players perform better, and would probably significantly help weaker players who don't know about them.

A Few Good Raiders

Crimsonbreeze:

Son, we play the game that has tiers, and those tiers have to be guarded by men with an attitude. Who's gonna do it? You? Or intern Musco? Toxic players have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for loot, and you curse the Elitism. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know. That kicking the noobs, while tragic, probably saved lives. And their existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want hardcore players to explore the game, you need elite players. We use words like masterloot, knowfights, gear check. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent achieving something. You use them as a punchline. So I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of Cartel Market. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, gear and rise your skill. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Jonax:

Colonel, did you order the vote kick?

Crimsonbreeze:

You're goddamn right I did!

Devilian First Impressions

Devilian is the latest game published by Trion. It's developed by a division of Bluehole, who made TERA. Devilian is a ARPG MMO, sort of like Diablo, only with more MMO aspects. It's the classic isometric perspective like Diablo, rather than the 3rd-person over-the-shoulder perspective of most modern MMOs. The design "asthetic" is very much like TERA.

The first thing that will turn off a lot of people is that classes are locked to a specific body type. The Evoker is a tall female, Cannoneer is a short female, Berserker is a brawny male, and Shadowhunter is a more slim male. You can change hair color, skin color, facial features, etc, but you are locked to the base body.

The game plays very well. Bluehole always gets this aspect right. The controls are crisp and well-done, and combat is very nice. The pace is slower than Diablo 3, but not excessively slow. Gearing is more like an MMO as well.

The leveling is very quest driven and linear. In fact, every quest literally has an auto-run which will automatically take you to the right location. This sounds excessive, but it works nicely for this style of game. Every few levels you come across a dungeon which you do with two others. There's no threat, so it's a bit of a zerg, but it plays well with just three. Group matching is automatic.

The game is polished, and feels high-quality. The story isn't anything amazing, it's on par with TERA and other imports. But there are a lot of nice touches all over. I'm only level 27 or so, and the cap is 55, so I have no idea what endgame is like.

There are some interesting aspects as well. For example, you have the standard gear (gloves, boots, hat, etc.) but you also have "talismans". Talismans are collectible cards featuring a person. Each card has attributes. You can equip up to five talismans. Some talismans belong to sets, and get bonuses if each card from the set is equipped. You can also merge duplicate cards together, making that talisman more powerful. You get talismans from boxes as rewards or that you can craft using materials from disenchanted magic items. It's actually a really neat alternate gearing system, with just the right amount of randomness, but even having "bad draws" be useful.

They're also trying some interesting things in the social realm. Every day you can send 10 gift boxes to people on your friends list. The game actually gives you a quest to invite 10 people as friends, and shows you a list of people at your level. So there's a lot of spamming strangers for invites around then. But I once defined social bonds as "repeated interactions among a set of people", so maybe sending gifts to each other will build bonds. Or maybe not. In any case, it's a neat idea.

The only thing I should note is that Devilian is a F2P game. There is a cash shop. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's cosmetic-only, or if you pay for power. I imagine that it will be like TERA's cash shop.

Personally, I think that, if you can get past the locked character classes, Devilian is worth trying. It plays well, and does a few new neat things. The talisman system in particular is worth stealing by other MMOs.

Proof of Competence

Once again we are discussing the issue of cookie-cutter specs created by theorycrafters and the high-end, and those specs being enforced by the playerbase at large.. An article on BlizzardWatch started the current issue, and Talarian offers his viewpoint.

I think that most of the comments are approaching this from the wrong angle. Everyone seems to assume that the players who insist on cookie-cutter specs are being irrational and "mean", denying other players the option to be creative. But what if the players insisting on cookie-cutter specs are entirely rational, and entirely correct in their reasoning?

So let's start there. Why do players insist on cookie-cutter specs?

Well, let's say you're a raid leader and you have two applicants: Chris and Sam. Chris' spec is drastically different from the accepted theorycraft, as are his secondary stats. Sam, on the other hand, is texbook cookie-cutter. Which of the two is more likely to be the better player?

You may not like to hear this, but 99% of the time Sam will be the better player. And it won't even be close. Sam will probably do twice the damage that Chris does. Adherence to the cookie-cutter spec is usually a sign the player has done outside research, who at least has read a guide and knows the best rotation.

Essentially what the raid leader is looking for is a "Proof of Competence". A cookie-cutter spec is one such proof. Yes, this is unfair to good players who want to experiment, but from the raid leader's point of view, she cannot infer that. The information she has is limited, and it's best to follow the Proof of Competence, even if she occasionally turns down a good player.

So how can we encourage a wider variety of specs? The answer to that revolves entirely around the Proof of Competence.

First, you could substitute something else as the Proof of Competence. Examples here are logs showing good performance, or achievements. These are often harder to obtain, though. Requiring a cookie-cutter spec is better than requiring people to have already beaten the fight you are working on.

Second, you can not allow the opportunity to view the Proof of Competence. For example, you could not allow inspection of specs. But that doesn't stop people from just asking questions. Another example is LFR, where the group is automatically put together. It's much easier to take a variant spec into LFR.

Third, you could make the spec matter a lot less. Throughput talents almost always have a "right" answer. If all talents were utility talents, most people would not care so much. For example, SWTOR talents are almost entirely utility talents, and no one cares what talents you take. However, the downside is that they require something different as a Proof of Concept. In SWTOR, pick-up groups usually require that you have already beaten the instance previously (by linking the achievement), which makes life hard for newer players.

Fourth, you could make content easier. Arguably LFR and Normal Mode in WoW are like this. People are less likely to insist on a Proof of Competence when success is likely.

Fifth, you can encourage extended groups such as guilds, and diminish the viability of transient pick-up groups. The thing about a Proof of Competence is that you only have to demonstrate it once, at the start of the relationship. Once the other players are confident in you, you have a lot more freedom. If the great mage in your group wants to experiment with a different spec tonight, the rest of the group is often happy to let her try. People in established raid groups have far more leeway to experiment with spec choices than people who run with pick-up groups.

In conclusion, players are being entirely rational when they insist on cookie-cutter specs. If you want to allow your players the freedom to choose their talents, you have to address the need to prove competence. From my point of view, cookie-cutter specs are actually among the least restrictive Proofs of Competence. Pretty much every other option is worse.

Aliases

One thing the Overwatch beta brought home to me is that I need to change my BattleNet tag. When Blizzard came up with the old system, the only Blizzard game I was playing was WoW. I couldn't think of a decent handle to use, and since the tag doesn't appear in WoW, I just entered my real name.

But now, when I play other Blizzard games, my real name appears very out of place. It is traditional to not use real names in gaming, to use a made-up handle instead.

I haven't really used an alias online in years though. My usual Coriel-style names are for characters, not for me. I suppose I could go back to using "GSHamster", but it was always pretty lame. I used it mostly for laughs in FPS games.

So I'm trying to think of a decent handle, and am drawing a blank. Do most of you use a consistent online alias? How did you come up with it in the first place?

Overwatch Stress Test Beta Impressions

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Overwatch Stress Test Beta this past weekend. I last played an First Person Shooter well over a decade ago, Unreal Tournament 99. So I didn't expect much from this test. I fully expect that I am in the bottom 20% of Overwatch's audience.

I didn't take any screenshots, so have some Blizzard ones.

My first reaction is that despite how terrible I was, Overwatch was really, really fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Overwatch has that "just one more game" draw to it. Matches are fast and frantic.

For the most part, I stuck with Mercy, who is a healer. Mercy is an excellently designed healer. She can heal or buff allies, and her ultimate is a resurrection of all dead allies. She's very well designed for new players, as her ability targeting is quite forgiving and has a decent about of computer assist. On the other hand, she's pretty fragile, and you'll die a lot. Blizzard nailed the aesthetic of a basic healer here. It's even great when, at the end of match, you see a Play of the Game, and it's your teammate and you can see that you healing/buffing them throughout their play.

After playing healer for a bit, I tried out some of the other characters. I'm pretty terrible at aiming, so I wasn't having much luck until I tried Reaper. For some reason, I just clicked with Reaper, and managed to actually get as many kills as deaths in a few games. I even got a couple kill streaks and a Play of the Game (which was basically me charging blindly at a group of people and magically killing several of them somehow).

A Blizzard screenshot of Reaper

There are a lot of heroes, and they all feel different, both to play as and fight against.

There are also some interesting design decisions. I don't know if other modern FPS'es do this, but if time expires, but there are still people fighting on the object, the game goes into overtime and continues until either the objective is cleared or the attackers claim it. It makes for some amazingly tense final seconds of a match, and is just so much fun.

There is no also killboard for the entire group. Instead, at the end of the match, Blizzard feature four people (who can come from either team) who have done quite well based on whatever metrics they capture. For example, people can show up for number of kills, healing done, damage absorbed by tanks, etc. Then everyone can vote for one person to be MVP. Blizzard then shows you personal stats for the match, and compares them to your average play. So there is a bit of feedback there, as it's really nice to show up on a card, and to slowly drag your averages up.

By focusing on the positive plays, Blizzard avoids embarrassing or humiliating lower skill players, but still provides them decent feedback. I hope Blizzard stands strong on this decision, as a lot of better FPS players on Reddit and the like seem to be demanding a killboard.

There's also no progression systems built in. It's very much a throwback to old FPS games of the 1990s where your character was the same in every match and didn't really change or level up. I liked this, as it is a lot easier to drop in and play, and outside of player skill, opposing characters behaved predictably.

Overall, I thought Overwatch was a lot of fun. Of course, I have zero idea what its competition is like, or what the hardcore FPS scene is like. But I'll probably pick up Overwatch when it is released.

Holy Paladins in Legion

Blizzard has started releasing Class Previews. Here's the Paladin preview. They say that are aiming going back and strengthening the core fantasy of each of the specializations. Here's what they plan to do for Holy paladins:

We love the unique identity of the Paladin healer and are modifying the gameplay to better support it. Single-target healing from Beacon of Light remains their marquee ability, but other abilities and talents have been adjusted to encourage Holy Paladins to be near the people they want to heal—including melee characters, when necessary. This is incentivized by Lightbringer, a new Mastery, which increases healing on allies near you. This is further reinforced by the addition of a row of Aura talents that provide a variety of localized beneficial effects, and refinements to some spells, such as Light of Dawn returning to being a cone.

It looks like Paladin healing will remain roughly the same, but with a bit more emphasis on positioning. That's pretty good, I've always enjoyed spells like Light of Dawn and the old Holy Radiance. As well, Auras were a core part of the Vanilla paladin, and it's good to see them come back.

Of course, for this plan to work, holy paladins can't be targeted by range effects. We'll see if their encounter design team actually remembers this.

Talents will also provide players with options to incorporate offensive capabilities while healing. When allies are in need, Light of the Martyr allows the Holy Paladin to rapidly heal them by sacrificing personal health. Finally, we’re addressing gameplay restrictions caused by Holy Power—in which players often feel forced to use abilities in specific orders or ratios—by removing it in favor of making Mana the primary resource.

That's good. Healing works best when it is fairly simple resource-wise. Holy Power didn't really add much to the healing experience.

To give you an idea of the Holy Paladin in action, here’s a basic look at their core combat abilities: 

Holy Light
2.0% Mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast
A slow but efficient spell, healing a friendly target for a moderate amount. 

Flash of Light
4.0% Mana, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
A quick but expensive spell, healing a friendly target for a moderate amount. 

Light of the Martyr
2.5% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
Sacrifices a moderate amount of your own health to instantly heal an ally for a moderate amount.
Cannot be cast on yourself.

Light of the Martyr is an interesting spell. Divine Intervention is always cited as a defining paladin ability, but it has proven too difficult to bring back. Light of the Martyr aims to get some of that same flavor back. It's should be especially interesting in PvP, as it is instant but with an important PvP cost. I'm not sure it will be much use in PvE, even though PvE damage is more predictable, making the spell safer to use.

Light of Dawn
4.0% Mana, 1.5 sec cast, 12 sec cooldown
Unleash a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 5 injured allies within a 15 yd frontal cone for a moderate amount. 

Holy Shock
1.5% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown
Instantly trigger a burst of Light on the target, dealing moderate Holy damage to an enemy, or moderate healing to an ally.
Holy Shock has double the normal critical strike chance. 

Infusion of Light
Passive
Your Holy Shock criticals reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light by 1.5 sec or increase the healing of your next Flash of Light by 50%. 

Beacon of Light
0.5% Mana, 60 yd range, Instant, 3 sec cooldown
Place a Beacon of Light on a friendly target.
Your heals on other party or raid members will also heal the Beacon of Light target for up to 50% of the amount healed. Your Flash of Light and Holy Light on the Beacon of Light target will also refund 40% of their Mana cost. 

Mastery: Lightbringer
Proximity to your target causes your spells to heal for up to 30% (with Mastery from typical gear) more.

The mastery is pretty interesting. One suggestion I would make is to rename it to Devotion Aura and make sure there is a buff on affected parties. This makes it more like the Auras of old, and I think is a small cosmetic change that would make it a lot more appealing.

I'm not entirely sure if Blizzard intends the bonus to scale depending on the distance between you and the target. For example, 30% if you're right on top of each other, 15% at 5 yards, 0% at 10 yards. I hope they don't do this, and have a flat bonus for everyone within a certain range, especially as you will never be right on top of the tank.

Additionally, to provide a glimpse at how some talents may build upon this, here’s one example of a Holy-specific talent: 

Beacon of the Lightbringer
Passive
The maximum bonus from Mastery: Lightbringer is increased by 24%, and it now increases your healing based on the target's proximity to either you or your Beacon of Light, whichever is closer.

An interesting talent, allowing you to add a second Mastery circle to the raid, and compensate for positioning. Since Beacon will be on the tank, this Mastery circle should cover both the tank and the melee groups, if the Holy paladin does not want to stand in melee.

All in all, the changes to Holy Paladins look good. The changes for the other classes and specs are also looking very good, with some classes (Shadow Priests, for example) seeing significant overhauls.

Legion Cinematic

The Legion Cinematic was released at Blizzcon this past weekend. As is traditional, we note that it is quite good, but not as good as the Wrath cinematic. The explicit call out to the Wrath cinematic at the very start is nice.

Again, technically the cinematic is very well done. In particular, the Blizzard cinematic team did an excellent job with Varian. He may very well be the best CG human I have seen. They nailed the look and feel of an aging warrior king, one who has been fighting all his life.

The trailer has no orcs! It's kind of sad that is now a good thing, and shows how much Blizzard overused the orcs in the last two expansions. Instead the Horde side is represented by Sylvannas, who is always good to see. She also looks very good, like a proper undead banshee queen.

This cinematic has one really superb scene, where the skycarrier is crashing and Varian closes his eyes. It's the one moment where Blizzard is willing to do less, and it pays off. Otherwise the scenes are a touch too busy.

Still though, it's a great cinematic, and starts off Legion on a high note.

Has Final Fantasy XIV caught World of Warcraft?

The latest news is that World of Warcraft lost another 100,000 subscribers, and is now at 5.5 million subscribers. This is a pretty small loss compared to the previous quarters, and is somewhat unusual given the content drought WoW is going through.

That 5 million number has come up recently in another context, though. FFXIV announced it had over 5 million "registered accounts".

No one is quite sure what SE means by registered accounts, though. Last year, SE said FFXIV had 2 million registered accounts and 500,000 daily logins. With 500,000 daily logins, that 2 million number is almost certainly subscriptions. So if "registered accounts" were what we would call subscriptions last year, then I think it's reasonable to believe that they are subscriptions this year as well.

As well, consider the latest trailer FFXIV has put out for the 3.1 patch. The last frame explicitly says, "Join Over 5 Million Adventurers Worldwide". This again cuts strongly in favor of FFXIV having 5 million current subscribers or equivalents.

Of course, the distribution of subscribers is probably different. WoW probably has more NA/EU players, while FFXIV has more Japanese players.

But in my view, FFXIV is now roughly the same size as WoW. With a new FFXIV content patch coming next week, and no new content in sight for WoW, it's possible that FFXIV will actually surpass WoW and claim the crown of "largest subscription MMO" in the near future.

It certainly puts a different light on Blizzard's decision to stop reporting subscription numbers. It's one thing to report losses when you're still at the top. It's another to confirm that you've slipped to second place.

Quantum Link Remembered

David Wilding sent me a link to his article about Quantum Link, a online service from 1985 (30 years ago!). It's a very nice and thorough look at one of the forerunners of our current internet environment.

Quantum Link is about a decade before my time, but I remember connecting to BBSes in the 1990s, and playing Doom over modems. Good times.

Heh, here's a tidbit about PvP in Habitat, an early MMO that ran on Quantum Link:

At first, during early testing, we found out that people were taking stuff out of others hands and shooting people in their own homes. We changed the system to allow thievery and gunplay only in non-city regions.

PvP game designers encountering PvP players, something we've been able to count on for the last 30 years.

Edit: Pallais found a really nice paper on Habitat, written in 1990. It's an interesting read.

Blade And Soul Beta, Headset Issues

I tried the Blade and Soul Closed Beta test this weekend. I didn't get very far, mostly because of an odd headset issue. I'll give quick impressions below.

Headset Issues

I had an odd issue with my headphones this weekend. For some reason, I could not hear voices at all, but all background music and other sounds came through fine. At first I thought it was caused by the Blade and Soul beta, so I uninstalled that relatively quickly. But that didn't help.

After a lot of fiddling, I found that if I adjusted the Left/Right balance of my headphones, I could hear voices. Of course, now everything sounded odd. It looks like I'll just have to find a replacement headset.

Blade And Soul Impressions

Because of the above issue, I didn't really get that much time with Blade and Soul. I tried the first 3 levels or so with three or so classes. However, since the beta was a weekend-only thing, I didn't bother re-downloading it after uninstalling it the first time.

Blade and Soul is an action-y MMO from Korea, being brought over here by NCSoft. The character creator is very extensive with crazy amounts of sliders. Sadly, for me this just means that it is very hard to make a decent-looking character, and very easy to make something grotesque. I ended up doing my standard "drag every slider to the middle" technique.

The game plays a little like TERA, with somewhat similar controls. There are some interesting design touches, like several classes having a block-style ability. Successfully executing a block restores resources and empowers one of your attacks.

However, I am not a big fan of the interface. Most western games like to have the default interface on the edges of the screen, leaving the center area dedicated to your character and the world. Blade and Soul moves a lot of the important UI elements into that center area, impinging on your view of your character.

Of course, the flip-side is that this is very common practice among experienced players. Moving the most relevant information closer to the center is very useful for performance. I just did not like it here, though. It seemed like there was too much "UI" and not enough "game".

However, I really did not get any time to give more than the barest of impressions. Maybe next beta weekend I'll be able to give a better overview.

Fallen Empire: Alliances

I've finished the nine chapters of Fallen Empires that were released. Shintar makes a good point, when she describes the experience as "the borders between your personal story and the rest of the game are marked more starkly." The main story is very much a true single-player experience, the KotoR 3 that people have been asking for.

But after that come the more traditional MMO elements. Here, Bioware has done some interesting things. The main story of Fallen Empire is not complete yet. What's been released is more like Part 1. Where it stops, your character is setting up an Alliance to oppose the Zakuul Empire.

In some respects, it's like Garrisons from WoW. Only the focus is on recruiting new companions, and sending you out into the galaxy to accomplish things, rather than encouraging you to hang around your base.

One amusing element is that SWTOR now has a second conversation style. Bioware is touting it as a callback to KotoR, but it's real advantage is that your character is unvoiced. This allows Bioware to add these small pieces of content without calling in all 16 class voice actors.

In any case, there are 4 or 5 companions you can recruit through small missions or other tactics. For example, one companion requires you to participate in 20 PvP matches (wins count as 2 matches). Another companion requires you to hunt dangerous beasts, which you can do by killing World Bosses. Level sync makes that a lot more interesting. I like this because the only reward is a companion, of which you have plenty. So these missions are totally optional.

There are also Star Fortresses. Six worlds have Star Fortresses in orbit, and you have to do a mission on the ground to take out the shield protecting them. The Star Fortresses themselves are miniature instances, which can either be done solo or in a group of 2-4. It's pretty great content for just grabbing a friend and running through them.

Finally, all the planetary Heroic missions have been rebalanced and are available from your base, offering transport directly to the mission. This is essentially solo or duo content, and rewards lockboxes which you turn in to improve your base, and also gives you legacy cosmetic gear.

All in all, the Alliances seem like a strong and extensible system for solo and duo endgame content.

Knights of the Fallen Empire: Early Access

Yesterday SWTOR launched early access for its latest expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. The launch was smooth, with no real server issues.

There was an amusing bug where all companions were not wearing pants when you logged in. The companion gearing system has changed, with gear being cosmetic only. Therefore companions no longer have non-visible gear slots. All extra gear was sent to your inventory or mail. Amusingly enough, companion pants were also sent to inventory unnecessarily.

The story is quite good. I'm in the middle right now, so we'll see how it ends. It's very much in the vein of Mass Effect 2, with a time skip and rebuilding your companion roster.

The graphics also seem to have bumped up a notch in the expansion, especially the major NPC models.

The big question I have is if this is really enough content. Each chapter is about one hour in length, and nine of them were released yesterday. So pretty much every one is going to blitz through them fairly quickly. Starting in the new year, Bioware is planning on releasing one chapter every month. Is one hour of story content each month enough to keep people playing?

On the other hand, it's more content than we got previously, and people kept playing. So who knows.

The other interesting element was that there is a minimal gear increase. Playing through the existing story up to Ziost gives you item level 190 gear, and HM raiding gave 198 gear. So far, KotFE has only been handing out 190 gear (mostly for people who choose the instant 60), and it looks like group content will start with 200 to 204 level gear. That's a very compressed gear curve, which is fairly unusual for an MMO.

So far so good. We'll see how the story finishes, and what endgame content looks like.

SWTOR and Class Armor

One overlooked aspect of the new SWTOR expansion is that SWTOR seems to be moving away from class-based armor entirely. This is unusual for an MMO based on classes.

The primary stats (Strength, Willpower, Aim, Cunning) are being replaced with a single stat called Mastery. So all gear becomes interchangeable class-wise. There are still multiple secondary stats, including some role-specific ones like Defense or Accuracy. But no longer will an item drop and you can say that it is Warrior gear or Agent gear.

The other element is that most newer armor is "Adaptive". This means that if you're a class that uses Light Armor, the armor is Light Armor for you. If you use Heavy Armor, it's Heavy, and so on.

The link between armor and class in a class-based MMO is usually very strong. But with these changes, the link becomes very weak. I'm sure that there will still be gear with class-specific set bonuses. But outside of that, we're setting up for a situation where any class can wear any gear.

I'm not so sure that I like this change. I like having different armor for the different classes. I suppose that it can be annoying to wait for your one piece to drop, though. Still, it does feel like the game has lost something.

Maybe this is an inevitable result of selling cosmetic gear in a F2P game. You don't want to restrict costumes to different characters, so you sell costumes that all characters can wear. And then there's not much point in forcing the player to find a Strength mod compared to an Aim mod.

I am a bit surprised that SWTOR hasn't taken the next step and started dropping armor shells separately from the mods in instances. That would separate the cosmetic part of the armor even farther from the mechanics aspect. People who wanted the mods would roll specifically on them. People who wanted the costume could roll specifically on the armor shell.

Crowfall and the Metagame

It's been a while since I've written anything about Crowfall. Artcraft looks to be steadily making progress. Unfortunately most of their updates in the last few months have been in video format, so I've pretty much ignored them. Videos just take so long to get through compared to text, and text is so much easier to reread and pull out bits to chew on.

In any case, Artcraft seems to be toying with the idea of promoting a "metagame" as in Eve Online. Where people can be spies and scammers in other guilds, and betray them, etc. It's always a newsworthy part of Eve, so it's not surprising that it would be attractive to someone making another PvP MMO.

However, I think it's a bad idea. To be fair, I think it's a bad idea in Eve Online as well. The culture of spying, betraying, "awoxing", and generally being hard to trust is bad for the game. I think games where trust is easier are a lot more fun. But Eve has its own culture, and the people who play Eve are happy with it.

However, I think the "metagame" is an especially bad fit for Crowfall. Crowfall's signature element is that the game board resets. After a while, the campaign world ends, and players start fresh on a new campaign world.

A strong metagame cuts across that. When the board resets, the alliances and enemies made should also reset. I'm sure we've all played board games with people who hold a grudge from one game to the next. Or two people who will always attack each other. Or people in a relationship, where you can expect one of them to throw away her chance at victory to support her partner. These games are less fun than new games where everyone is attempting to win.

Crowfall will never get rid of all relationships between campaigns. For one thing, guilds will want to play together and support each other. But it's better if the game encourages relationships between guilds to reset, to treat each world as truly new. But that will require discouraging the Eve-style metagame of guild politics.

DPS Meters and Player Behavior

Whether DPS meters are good or bad is a hotly debated topic. I saw an interesting Reddit post by WitcherMog that approaches the question from a different angle.

In FFXIV, there are no in-game damage meters. However, you can run an external parser that reads your combat log and gives information for your group. FFXIV runs on a  "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to meters, though. If you reference them in chat, it's considered harassment, and you get punished by SE. So meters are pretty much the province of individuals and high-end static groups.

WitcherMog ran 100 instances with his parser active and compared player behavior with parser results. He found that harassment of other group members for being slow or wiping uniformly came from low-dps players.

The negative behavior indulged in by high-powered players (as measured by gear level) was to slack off during fights. Of course, negative behavior in either case only occurred in a minority of runs.

This is not quite the same negative behavior exhibited in games with public meters. In WoW, any harassment is more likely to come from good dps towards the low dps.

The results do make sense. In a game without meters, a good dps makes the run faster and less likely to wipe. So really, she has nothing to complain about, as all visible outcomes are positive. Meanwhile the low dps player believes he is doing fine, believes that he is really a good player, so obviously any problems must come from the other players.

In a game with meters, on the other hand, the poor player cannot blame others for visibly bad outcomes, because each individual performance is quantified. However, even if the outcome is visibly good, a negative high-dps player can feel aggrieved that she is "carrying" the group, and incite harassment of the others that she feels are not playing up to par.

So it's really a choice of picking your poison. Without meters, runs that have negative outcomes like excessive slowness or wipes incur harassment from the very people who most likely cause the problem in the first place. With meters, a run that is successful might very well still see harassment, just because one player thinks another player is not living up to an arbitrary standard.

There's no obvious best choice here. Would you rather have poor players never realize that they're bad, or have good players hold others to an unnecessary standard?

Of course, we must reiterate that, especially in FFXIV, we are talking about a minority of outcomes. Most runs are successful and go just fine.

A Lull in the Storm

It feels like we're in a lull in the MMO sphere. There's stuff on the horizon, but nothing really interesting is happening right now. Well, I guess there was the Wildstar F2P launch, but I ignored that.

The Old Republic's Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion comes in a week. In a month, FFXIV will drop its 3.1 patch. Who knows when the next Warcraft expansion will come out. I honestly thought Blizzard would aim for a release around the end of the year. But with no beta in sight, that's looking extremely unlikely.

In the meantime I'm just casually cleaning up side-activities in TOR and FFXIV.

In TOR, I've levelled my Sith Warrior to 60, and am also looking to go through all the companion stories from the original game. I have 5 done, so only 3 classes to go.

In FFXIV, I've levelled White Mage to 59. I also have worked on pretty much all the other classes, gaining a level here and a level there. I really should pick one activity to focus on. But there's so many options I'm just bouncing around.

What are you doing in this lull?

Level Syncing

Last week The Old Republic revealed some of the game mechanic changes coming in Fallen Empire. The most controversial is that all planets will be level synced. That is, when you out-level a planet, your character and gear will be scaled back to the max level for that planet.

On the one hand, I can see why some people are unhappy. These games are about character progression, and level syncing undoes your progression. It's fun to come back to an old zone that gave you trouble and destroy it. What's the point of gaining levels if the game is going to arbitrarily roll them back?

On the other hand, because it's normal for a max level character to overpower old zones, the game never sends you back to those zones. Or if it does, it sets up a little max level area where the max level players go. It's harder to preserve challenge without level syncs.

Level sync makes it easier to add new content to old zones. For example, all holiday events in FFXIV are level 15 or 30. High level players will get synced down, and the low level requirement makes it easy for new players to join the event.

However, FFXIV only scales group content. Solo-content is pretty much left alone.

Another point is that level syncs also balance world PvP a bit better. Sure, a synced player is more powerful than a leveling character, but the disparity isn't as great any more. If world PvP starts up, the leveling players on the planet can join in.

In the end there is an unavoidable tension between maintaining character progression and preserving challenge. I think that FFXIV strikes a good balance for group content. I thought that Guild Wars 2 did a bad job maintaining character progression, as it was very aggressive about syncing levels, so you'd get scaled back even in the same zone. Games without leveling syncing basically give up on attempting to preserve a challenge in old zones.

We'll see how well TOR manages to balance both goals.

Starting Raiding In Warlords of Draenor

Atherne asks:

I've been thinking about this and have decided to try Raiding. I'll need to gear up an appropriately leveled character. Yours is the first Wow blog I ever read because I was looking for tips for my Paladin. My thought is, I always play Paladin, Shadow Priest and Warlock well in dungeons, so I should pick one of those for a first try. Any advice? Also, what Raid should I try first to see if I do well and like the format? Thanks!

I've decided to respond in a separate post so that I can get input from other people, especially people who are currently raiding in WoW.

I would suggest picking the character and specialization that you like the best and are most comfortable with. The only hard position is tanking, as tanks are generally held to a higher standard than everyone else.

The way I see it, there are three paths you can take:

1. Looking For Raid

Just sign up for LFR with your character. I would follow the Legendary quest, as it takes you through all the current raids in order.  It's pretty much like a dungeon run, only with a lot more people. You can read up on the fights in the Dungeon Journal, and that will give you a decent idea of what's going to happen.

If you sign up as DPS, your queue time will be fairly long. You can sign up for multiple wings to help with this.

This path is the easiest to get into. You can do it on your own time and on your own schedule. It's also the least rewarding path, though. However, you will see all the content and get your feet wet.

2. Pre-made Groups in the Group Finder

Here you would find a Normal Mode group for the raid you are interested in. Start with Highmaul if you can find it. You will probably need to watch some video guides, as it is expected that you will know the fights.

In some ways these might be the hardest groups to join, as these types of groups are often leery or unwilling to take completely new players. As well, most people are focusing on the latest raid, so it might be hard to find groups for the older raids.

The advantage here again is that you can do it on your own schedule. However, there's no guarantee that you'll find a group willing to take you on a specific day.

3. Find a Guild

Here you have to look for a guild which does Normal raids at a regular day and time where you can attend. You'll probably have to apply on their website, or at least talk to an officer in-game. Here you'll have to do whatever the group is currently working on.

From an organizational standpoint this is the most work. As well, you'll have to raid on a specific schedule. However, this is also the path which is most likely to be successful for a new raider. Because you are willing to commit to the guild, the guild is willing to commit to you, to invest in training you in how to raid.

This is also the most rewarding path, in my opinion. Working on mastering fights as a group is what raiding is all about to me, and this is the path which exemplifies that. But there's no doubt this is also the path which requires the most commitment from you.

The most important part here is to make sure you are compatible with the guild you choose. That your schedules match, and that you like the atmosphere in the guild.

Conclusions

Those are the options as I see it. LFR and Group Finder are easier schedule-wise, but does put a little more burden on you to learn fights and improve on your own. It's much easier to learn how to raid from an existing raid guild, and is also more rewarding, but the price is that your time is no longer fully your own.

Note that if you choose to look for a guild, you can still do LFR until you find one.

Thoughts and tips from other readers? What would you do if you were completely new to raiding?