I listen to or watch quite a few podcasts and streams related to gaming. For the most part it is where my gaming news comes from and my window to games that I may not have picked up, or maybe even heard of. Frequently viewers want advice on how they can get started doing this sort of thing. Playing video games and making money. Part of me wants to say this is unique to this Youtuber/Streamer fanbase. But ask a morning DJ and they'll tell you how often people tell them that all their friends say they have a great voice for radio. Or turn on American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance to see the army of minimally talented individuals who believe they have a shot.
I've fallen for it myself. I glance around and I have a magnificent web cam that points at a great angle showing off my gaming swag. I had one of those Yeti USB mics at the top of my Christmas list this year. I have this blog that I keep telling myself I am going to stay regular on. Looking deeper...this Aeron chair isn't for broadcasting, it's for marathon gaming sessions. These AS400's are not for hosting radio shows, they are for sound immersion without disturbing my girlfriend. This blog goes weeks without updates because I'd rather be playing games than typing about them.
The reality is that I am a consumer and that's ok. In fact, that's great! There is much less stress watching a brilliantly produced Youtube series than there is thinking one up and executing it.
I found gamebreaker.tv while looking for scraps of info on Star Wars the Old Republic a year and half ago. It was among a half dozen podcasts I listened to in the lead up to that game. The build up, launch and collapse of my interest in that game has left me with a network of casters and content producers who I relate to, who's interests vary and extend beyond mine. It's a great way to experience games that I would otherwise overlook. Trials and Day Z are great examples. These are games I will never play. But watching other people play them is amazingly entertaining.
Thank you to all the serious Streamers and Youtubers out there. Us consumers appreciate the hard work that goes into what you do. I have no interest in taking over one of your shows, but if you ever want to play a game sometime, give me a shout. I am quite bad at most genres.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Leading a Guild
Over the last decade I have grown along with the MMO industry, social interaction has evolved a great deal.
Back in the Pre WoW days guilds were groups of people who spent days huddled in spawn locations for great monsters who's spawn times were legend. And then a phone tree would go out and players who were offline, would start to appear ready to fight this monster that their guild mate was running in circles with while dozens of other players looked on all hoping he'd screw up and get killed so they could start running it in circles until their guild got there. Eventually the once every 10+ days monster would be killed and he would drop his super awesome item and some sort of predetermined outcome would happen. Maybe it was sold and the profits shared among the members who were present. Maybe it was given to a particular member for their service, and maybe some day in the future, if you helped enough, months from now you could have your very own once every 10 days monster loot.
Placating dozens of players who all want cool things takes an extreme degree of skill. I've been there, and I hate it.
As I grew into WoW I started to become involved in the guilds I was associated with. I always put in extra effort to make sure I was bringing everything I could to raids as a personal contribution. Buffs and gear, rep grinds and such. I played a lot, hours every day plus raid times. I was calm and well spoken in voice chat and outwardly reasonable when it came to loot distribution conflicts. This lead to promotions to Officer rank all the time, and ultimatly to my frustration and abandonment of the guild in the long run.
What most people don't tell you about running a guild is that it becomes the game. More than that, it becomes the only game, because the primary asset it takes to lead a guild is time. You can be a great leader, but if you aren't giving the game 40 hours a week your guild will fall apart. Of those 40 hours maybe you'll spend half of them raiding. That's the content you are interested in, that's why you are leading this guild. The other 20 hours, you'll be recruiting, dealing with member disputes, learning boss strategies, keeping up to date on server activities, game news and helping guild members get various tasks completed. Very rarely will you have the freedom to just find something fun to do in the game.
This is why I don't want to be involved in guild leadership anymore. I just want to play the game. I would like to Raid and tackle challenging content. But I also want to have the freedom to just log in for raids for a couple of weeks, or to just not log in at all for a month. And you can't do that if you run a guild, because it's nearly impossible to recover from it.
This is the situation I am in with my guild. It is run by friends, and we like to play together, but we are no longer interested in "leading." As life has, over the years, shuffled our schedules only 7 of us are remain consistently active, and it's a rare time when we can tackle challenging 5 man content. The nature of our overlap means that usually there are only 3 of us at a time, or there are 6 or 7. Almost always too few or too many
I gave it quite a bit of thought and I have determined the only real fix is for someone to get sick of doing nothing and find a new guild. The rest of us would follow. We need to find new leaders and step into the crowd of their team. I am not interested in doing that, as much as I don't want to lead, I am just as uninterested in being lead. But I do enjoy playing with my friends, so I will follow them if they move forward. I feel, though, that they are feel much the same as I do.
Maybe we all just got old.
Back in the Pre WoW days guilds were groups of people who spent days huddled in spawn locations for great monsters who's spawn times were legend. And then a phone tree would go out and players who were offline, would start to appear ready to fight this monster that their guild mate was running in circles with while dozens of other players looked on all hoping he'd screw up and get killed so they could start running it in circles until their guild got there. Eventually the once every 10+ days monster would be killed and he would drop his super awesome item and some sort of predetermined outcome would happen. Maybe it was sold and the profits shared among the members who were present. Maybe it was given to a particular member for their service, and maybe some day in the future, if you helped enough, months from now you could have your very own once every 10 days monster loot.
Placating dozens of players who all want cool things takes an extreme degree of skill. I've been there, and I hate it.
As I grew into WoW I started to become involved in the guilds I was associated with. I always put in extra effort to make sure I was bringing everything I could to raids as a personal contribution. Buffs and gear, rep grinds and such. I played a lot, hours every day plus raid times. I was calm and well spoken in voice chat and outwardly reasonable when it came to loot distribution conflicts. This lead to promotions to Officer rank all the time, and ultimatly to my frustration and abandonment of the guild in the long run.
What most people don't tell you about running a guild is that it becomes the game. More than that, it becomes the only game, because the primary asset it takes to lead a guild is time. You can be a great leader, but if you aren't giving the game 40 hours a week your guild will fall apart. Of those 40 hours maybe you'll spend half of them raiding. That's the content you are interested in, that's why you are leading this guild. The other 20 hours, you'll be recruiting, dealing with member disputes, learning boss strategies, keeping up to date on server activities, game news and helping guild members get various tasks completed. Very rarely will you have the freedom to just find something fun to do in the game.
This is why I don't want to be involved in guild leadership anymore. I just want to play the game. I would like to Raid and tackle challenging content. But I also want to have the freedom to just log in for raids for a couple of weeks, or to just not log in at all for a month. And you can't do that if you run a guild, because it's nearly impossible to recover from it.
This is the situation I am in with my guild. It is run by friends, and we like to play together, but we are no longer interested in "leading." As life has, over the years, shuffled our schedules only 7 of us are remain consistently active, and it's a rare time when we can tackle challenging 5 man content. The nature of our overlap means that usually there are only 3 of us at a time, or there are 6 or 7. Almost always too few or too many
I gave it quite a bit of thought and I have determined the only real fix is for someone to get sick of doing nothing and find a new guild. The rest of us would follow. We need to find new leaders and step into the crowd of their team. I am not interested in doing that, as much as I don't want to lead, I am just as uninterested in being lead. But I do enjoy playing with my friends, so I will follow them if they move forward. I feel, though, that they are feel much the same as I do.
Maybe we all just got old.
Monday, November 5, 2012
I like Dailies
I am a player that actually enjoys
daily quests. Most gaming pundits seem to wonder where the players
are who these quests are designed for. Well here I am.
The most important part of dailies is
that they are something that can be done every day by every player.
It gives everyone a reason to log in every day. This is important for
the broad community. It keeps populations stable and clumped so that
they can intersect and feel like they are part of a community. This
is also important for the small communities within the whole; guilds.
Having a collection of daily quests to address each day gets me
signed into the game, and into vent, and talking with my friends. We
are bound by this common task and it opens the doors of
communication. We start talking about dailies, and achievements, and
then TV and other games, and news and local events. Also, they are
entry level content, they aren't challenging, they offer players an
opportunity to be powerful heroes, which I think is good emotionally.
So I like them. I also like running dungeons, working on challenge modes, or playing some of the games I
bought in the Steam Summer Sale.
I haven't had an opportunity to do that
for the last month since most of my gaming time (and a significant
portion of the writing time) is soaked by the massive collection of
dailies presented in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. It's
really too much, when you add up all the crucial reputations it's
about 40 quests every day. That doesn't count Cloud Serpents, Anglers
or Nat Pagle. I feel like there are probably even more that I either
don't know about or am forgetting. The system is not a good one.
There are a couple of ways this could
have worked out better. The first would have been to use the Lesser
Charms as a way to grant reputation. Have a weekly quest that costs X
Lesser Charms and then rewards Y reputation in the amount that
Blizzard wanted to limit the community to. The advantage here would
be that after you finished the X dailies you could take a break, or
store up some extras for the next week like you can for the Greater
Charm quest. The disadvantage would be that there is a real risk that
the servers kind of dwindle in population as the week goes on. On the
other hand it could revitalize the community and allow more players
to participate in all the great fringe activities we have in Mists.
Pet Battles, and Challenge Modes and knocking people off their mounts
with the turtle shell as they fly over the top of a mountain.
The other solution would have been to
tie the gear to factions in a different way than they have. Instead
of each reputation offering a certain item. Instead have every
reputation offer every item, but with a unique look. Klaxxi armor,
Golden Lotus Armor, August Celestial Armor and Shadow Pan Armor.
Nothing crazy or over the top, but distinct. As pre-raid gear it
shouldn't be the greatest in the game, but with Transmog as a feature
there is no reason not to have a neat set of transition gear, people
can choose to display it as a way of showing which faction they chose
to focus their efforts to helping. Make it a real choice, you can
only work on one rep at a time. You can do the other quests, but they
don't generate rep, that way guild members can help each other out if
they want, they still get gold and lesser charms, but no rep. Maybe
block off those armor sets to only your first choice. Sure some
people will want it all, but the more you offer limiting choices to
players the more they will become distinct. And the less they will
have to spend 3 hours running dailies every night for a month. God
damn it I just want to play Assassin's Creed! The most epic thing I
have had time to do is Perform a stunning aerial assassination on a
Bunny Rabbit. Even in my single player action games....afkljfslad
Monday, October 29, 2012
The SWTOR Free to Play Model
...is insane.
Star Wars: The Old Republic has moved
past being the game for me. Its initial design promised me a lot of
things I was looking for in an MMORPG, more RPG less MMO. That is to
say, a lot of story content and personal choice combined with the
ability to run challenging content with my friends and guild. As the
year has progressed the development process seemed to take a turn
away from the type of game-play I was interested in.
That being said, I can still look
objectively at this model and say, no...that's just nut-burgers.
The primary flaw in the structure of
the F2P model seems to stem from the failure to recognize that the
end game content provided was not keeping subscribers. The idea of
giving away the 1-50 game in an effort to attract players who they
would then block access to grindy end game content unless it was paid
for seemed flawed from the beginning. Full details about their plan
show a complete lack of touch with players and how they will respond.
In this sort of model certain things
are expected. Limited inventory, limited Auction House access,
limited character creation, limited character slots. Limited access
to expanded content. All of these things seem in line. But then
things start to get weird.
You can almost understand limited
access to Chat, no access to Mail, no access to player trades, no
access to the “who” command, as a way to limit tools that “Gold
Farmers” would use to peddle their wares. But this has the negative
effect of separating the free players from the community almost
entirely, they won't become attached if they can't interact.
The limit on Credits is understandable
for the same reason, but the limit set (250,000 for new free players
and 350,000 for returning players) is so low that I don't think you
can even purchase standard NPC sold features, like your final speeder
training. Interacting and becoming part of the Player driven economy
will be even more challenging. Considering certain rare cosmetic
items can be found in random boxes purchased from the real money
store are designed in a way that you can sell them to other players
this is supposed to be a mechanic that allows players with cash to
burn to have a path to extra Credits, but if the free players only
have 250,000 it caps out the market.
The limit on Crew Skills seems
arbitrary. (One for new F2P players, Two for returning players.) What
benefit does limiting crew skills have. The inability to “queue”
your crew seems fair enough. You'd think that you'd want to allow
access to full Crew Skills. They generate materials that take up
inventory space and credits that fill up a limited wallet. These
would seem to logically drive sales.
Then things really get … well stupid.
Limited Travel options. Your quick
travel is on a longer cool down. You can't use the fleet travel
power. Sprint is a paid perk. If you die while questing you can only
use your med droid 5 times before you have no choice but to return to
a med center for your re-spawn.
Increased vendor costs for goods and
services such as GTN use, repairs, and Talent Respecs, I think free
players get less money from a vendor for trash items they want to
sell. Free players also have to wait 3 days before selling an item
they got from the Real Money store...which makes…huh? Someone will
have to explain to me how that make sense or what purpose it serves.
Above level 10 free players earn 50%
less experience points. I would have to play through the entire game
to confirm my suspicion that this will make the 30-50 experience
unplayable. I think you will run out of content And have to run
Flashpoints and Warzones in order to catch up to the story content
when you run out. And since you can only run 5 Warzones a week and 3
flashpoints this could prove difficult.
If with all these restrictions you
still manage to somehow get your hands on a purple item you will not
be able to equip it. You will need to purchase a license for your
character to equip purple gear. A one time purchase at the moment,
but how long until they introduce the next tier of gear as “epic”
instead of “artifact” and then “legendary” or whatever that
you have to keep buying licenses for.
Finally, the most ridiculous
restriction is action bars. Originally limited to 1, recently amended
to 2. This is a game known for its ability bloat. Depending on your
class the 4 default action bars may not be enough for you, two most
certainly will not be enough, you will run out of space by the time
you are half way through the game. I have no idea why you would limit
access to the UI. At this point I would not be surprised to see them
charge for other elements of the game's engine. The UI customization
feature. Maybe Shadows are set to Off for free players, or maybe they
don't have access to the Hide Helmet toggle. Why not at this point!
Free players do not have access to
SW:TOR 1-50, They have access to a shitty nearly unplayable version
of SW:TOR 1-50.
The idea is that if these players see a
game they enjoy they should pay for it. The problem is that they have
this model already and it is hemorrhaging players and has been since
January.
If you gut your game and make it
unplayable the reasonable response from a player is not going to be
“Oh, I should chip in 5 dollars to make this experience not
terrible.” it will be “This game is terrible, I'm going to go
play something else.”
I don't really have any advice for
Bioware on this, They've spent a long time digging this hole, the
only way out is down. My advice for people interested in seeing the
individual class stories in SWTOR would be to check them out quickly,
I do not expect there will be an opportunity to play them in another
year's time.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Back Again
I had some pretty major stuff going on
at work for the last couple of months. It looks like that's mostly
behind us, which frees up a considerable amount of mental real estate
for me. I hope this means I can get back to writing. For those of you
who know me, when I say I have a dozen of something on my desk you
will assume it is half empty cans of pop, and you'd be right. But for
those of you who know me well, you would also guess half empty cans
of pop, listen I said you were right, but there is something else! I
have all these scraps of paper with notes and subjects I want to
write about on them. Some of these are topical, some of them are time
sensitive, others are timeless and broad reaching. I thought about
how I wanted to tackle this. Since I don't exactly have a reader base
at the moment I figured it would go completely unnoticed if I just
filled in the two month hole in content with the things I planed on
writing about. On further thought, though, I felt like that wasn't
really worthwhile to paint that false reality. So I had to think
about what I wanted to do with the time sensitive backlog, things
like Impressions of 5.0 World of Warcraft prior to Mists of
Pandaria's release. I still want to write about these things I feel
that it's important to get on paper who I am and how I view the
landscape of gaming. How will this impact new stories that need to be
told? I think new time sensitive items must be given priority,
otherwise I will just always be chasing the story and never get
caught up. There are items I have that are not time sensitive, I can
back burner these stories and write them in the future. I will not be
back dating my opinions. When I write the stories I thought of
writing two months ago they will include my current perspective on
things. Here is the list of topics I plan to cover in the weeks to
come. Expect content three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday
followed by a Youtube post on Saturday that digs deeper into one of
my news stories of the week.
SWTOR's Free To Play Model
Economies in Beta
Respect for other games
Guild Wars 2 Impressions: Dynamic
Events
Guild Wars 2 Impressions: Dungeons
Guild Wars 2 Impressions: World Versus
World
Guild Wars 2 Impressions: Structured
PVP
World of Warcraft: Why do I enjoy
dailies?
World of Warcraft: Monk impressions
World of Warcraft: Pandaria impressions
World of Warcraft: Mini games in MMO's
FTL: Faster Than Light Impressions
The Next Big Thing: Where will the MMO
Market Move to Next
The MMO that would own my life
Wildstar Thoughts
Mechwarrior Tactics Vs Mechwarrior
Online
World of Warcraft: Character
Development
Ok, that seems like everything I have
jotted down. I'm sure I'll find something else written on the bottom
of one of my socks next time I do laundry. What!? When do you come up
with great ideas? I will come back and cross these out as I generate
the corresponding article. The youtube post is the part that scares
me most. Frankly my spoken word is more interesting than my written,
and I don't have to worry about spelling and grammar, yet it still
feels more vulnerable. I really want to get on there and talk about
SWTOR quest design though. One step at a time!
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Right, it's Wednesday again.
So I had two solid collums to right two weeks ago and they remain unwritten, I have a review of World of Warcraft patch 5.0 but I haven't even finished installing it yet.
What can I say Guild Wars 2 is fun.
I have been up to some other stuff though, I want to get Twitch and Youtube content involved, and I've taken the piliminary steps towards that.
On a side note...no longer unique legacy names. Interesting. Feels like a server integration thing. Specifically for cross server PVP and PVE queue'ing. So the game doesn't freak out when two Prime Legacies end up on the same map.
I'll take a hard look at content this weekend and see if I can get on a more regular schedule. Also an editor.
What can I say Guild Wars 2 is fun.
I have been up to some other stuff though, I want to get Twitch and Youtube content involved, and I've taken the piliminary steps towards that.
On a side note...no longer unique legacy names. Interesting. Feels like a server integration thing. Specifically for cross server PVP and PVE queue'ing. So the game doesn't freak out when two Prime Legacies end up on the same map.
I'll take a hard look at content this weekend and see if I can get on a more regular schedule. Also an editor.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Guild Wars 2 Launch Impressions
Trying to stick to a schedule while enjoying a highly anticipated game's pre-launch is a bitch, I'll just bump Friday and Monday's collumns to this Friday and Monday and blame it on something plausable, like still working on layout, or the wrong prescription glasses I got last week.
Aaaaanyway...
Guild Wars 2 head start began 3 hours early last Friday which caught me a little off guard because I was watching this cool Day Z Event. It may have cost me a name or two, but with 19 characters to play around with I made do.
Everything seemed operational. I created my characters to my satisfaction and then went to bed, because I am on that 8-5 desk jockey schedule. Sadly when I woke up at 7am the game was down for maintenance and a rollback. When it finally came back up I was able to get in and play and really enjoy the content. Unfortunately there were some problems in the launch that cannot be overlooked.
Before I point out the flaws I want to take a paragraph to trumpet some of the successes. First, it's obvious this is not their first rodeo, Arenanet knows how an MMO should run, and how MMO communities tend to behave. The server options were made well. They set artificial caps on server populations to force players to spread out. When all the servers were full, they ratcheted up the caps a tick or two and waited for people to sift into the newly created space. They did not foolishly create an extra 12 servers. In the short term this is creating a lot of "you have been moved to the overflow server" messages, but in the long run it will lead to richer communities. Launching the game 3 hours early was a good call too, it prevented their log in server from getting slammed all at once. Outside of a few short maintenance windows servers have been up since that initial launch time. The same cannot be said about all of the game's features though.
World v World maps have had their share of problems, mostly corrected after extensive downtime on Saturday. Some worlds are still dominating, hopefully this will sort itself out as Arenanet cycles the matches at a faster than normal pace.
Guilds were borked on Saturday morning after the maintenance. Guild invites haven't been working for guilds that were created prior to this, and some people were removed for their guilds. Having broken guilds in GUILD wars seems bad to me. This seems to still be a problem, particularly for large guilds.
The Trading Post has also been non-functional since sometime Saturday...I don't know how well it was working prior to the point it went offline, but I suspect not well. This has been very frustrating for the crafting community because they want access to nubletts...err....other player's crafting materials that they are probably selling to NPC's for 3c a piece. As of Today, this has still not been fixed.
The lack of an iOS Authenticator has led to a surprising number of account hacking. I am leading that story, let me correct. There have been a lot of accounts hacked by Gold Farmers, a mobile authenticator could have prevented this sort of attack on some accounts.
Hacked accounts weren't the only bans going out over the week. Arenanet is taking a hard line on behavior. There is a fun reddit thread out there on the subject. Offensive names and harassing treatment of other players in public places (map chat for example) has resulted in warnings in the form of 3 day bans. I applaud them on this effort, but I remember another MMO who's naming rules included "no dude or leet speak" and "no celebrity names, or real world titles/military ranks" who realized somewhere around the 3 million player mark that this was more work than it was worth and just let the community deal with it. If this stays a thing, and people who call other people offensive and racist terms in chat, or bully and harass in other ways are thanked for their $60 and shown the door; I look forward to pleasant community.
There have been some rumblings about leveling curve. I have several friends who I play with and each of them seemed to kind of run into a problem around 15-20 where they were outpacing the content. Ahh...but what is the content? It seems that many players are stuck thinking of renown hearts as quest hubs. They go, fill it up and then move to the next heart. That's not really how GW2 is designed. If that's how you want to play it, more power to you, but you'll need to travel a little more and do more than your own racial starting zone to fill in the gaps. But further exploring the maps and digging into the crafting system can result in a significant shift.
I would give this launch a B-
The Guild and Trading Post problems that persist 5 days later put an ugly blot on what otherwise has been a pretty solid experience.
If you are still on the fence, I say probably wait a week for these last few problems to shake themselves out. If you are looking for something to play, though, the game itself has been a blast so far. I will give a more complete review after I've had a month or so to soak it in.
Aaaaanyway...
Guild Wars 2 head start began 3 hours early last Friday which caught me a little off guard because I was watching this cool Day Z Event. It may have cost me a name or two, but with 19 characters to play around with I made do.
Everything seemed operational. I created my characters to my satisfaction and then went to bed, because I am on that 8-5 desk jockey schedule. Sadly when I woke up at 7am the game was down for maintenance and a rollback. When it finally came back up I was able to get in and play and really enjoy the content. Unfortunately there were some problems in the launch that cannot be overlooked.
Before I point out the flaws I want to take a paragraph to trumpet some of the successes. First, it's obvious this is not their first rodeo, Arenanet knows how an MMO should run, and how MMO communities tend to behave. The server options were made well. They set artificial caps on server populations to force players to spread out. When all the servers were full, they ratcheted up the caps a tick or two and waited for people to sift into the newly created space. They did not foolishly create an extra 12 servers. In the short term this is creating a lot of "you have been moved to the overflow server" messages, but in the long run it will lead to richer communities. Launching the game 3 hours early was a good call too, it prevented their log in server from getting slammed all at once. Outside of a few short maintenance windows servers have been up since that initial launch time. The same cannot be said about all of the game's features though.
World v World maps have had their share of problems, mostly corrected after extensive downtime on Saturday. Some worlds are still dominating, hopefully this will sort itself out as Arenanet cycles the matches at a faster than normal pace.
Guilds were borked on Saturday morning after the maintenance. Guild invites haven't been working for guilds that were created prior to this, and some people were removed for their guilds. Having broken guilds in GUILD wars seems bad to me. This seems to still be a problem, particularly for large guilds.
The Trading Post has also been non-functional since sometime Saturday...I don't know how well it was working prior to the point it went offline, but I suspect not well. This has been very frustrating for the crafting community because they want access to nubletts...err....other player's crafting materials that they are probably selling to NPC's for 3c a piece. As of Today, this has still not been fixed.
The lack of an iOS Authenticator has led to a surprising number of account hacking. I am leading that story, let me correct. There have been a lot of accounts hacked by Gold Farmers, a mobile authenticator could have prevented this sort of attack on some accounts.
Hacked accounts weren't the only bans going out over the week. Arenanet is taking a hard line on behavior. There is a fun reddit thread out there on the subject. Offensive names and harassing treatment of other players in public places (map chat for example) has resulted in warnings in the form of 3 day bans. I applaud them on this effort, but I remember another MMO who's naming rules included "no dude or leet speak" and "no celebrity names, or real world titles/military ranks" who realized somewhere around the 3 million player mark that this was more work than it was worth and just let the community deal with it. If this stays a thing, and people who call other people offensive and racist terms in chat, or bully and harass in other ways are thanked for their $60 and shown the door; I look forward to pleasant community.
There have been some rumblings about leveling curve. I have several friends who I play with and each of them seemed to kind of run into a problem around 15-20 where they were outpacing the content. Ahh...but what is the content? It seems that many players are stuck thinking of renown hearts as quest hubs. They go, fill it up and then move to the next heart. That's not really how GW2 is designed. If that's how you want to play it, more power to you, but you'll need to travel a little more and do more than your own racial starting zone to fill in the gaps. But further exploring the maps and digging into the crafting system can result in a significant shift.
I would give this launch a B-
The Guild and Trading Post problems that persist 5 days later put an ugly blot on what otherwise has been a pretty solid experience.
If you are still on the fence, I say probably wait a week for these last few problems to shake themselves out. If you are looking for something to play, though, the game itself has been a blast so far. I will give a more complete review after I've had a month or so to soak it in.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Expectations and Disapointments
I do not usually purchase the big boxes anymore in the gaming industry. The big budget, bigger advertising budget games. Mostly I stick to my MMO's and shovel my $15 a month into the fire. Certain anticipated products grab me still, but I like to think that's personal anticipation and hype.
The last title I "Bought" at launch was Diablo 3, but I'd been locked into that since last October with my World of Warcraft Subscription. Prior to that, Mass Effect 3. Before that, Arkham City. (Ok fine, SWTOR, but that's different)
I am now looking around my workspace trying to figure out what the game before that was. Darkspore? Mostly I just keep to my MMO's
As a person immersed in gaming I am frequently not marketed to. Historically those big budgets reach out to the prime time TV viewers and magazine readers. This has started to change, Hulu and Youtube Ads have started featuring more gaming content as well as more internet based fan(ish) news sites trying to monetize their hobby business. I have been seeing a lot more of the big Budget games of the summer and fall season. August in particular has been a big month. Sleeping Dogs, Transformers and Guild Wars 2 all called to me.
Sleeping Dogs reminded me of Hong Kong Action Movies, and Shadowfist and Feng Shui the Action Movie Pen and Paper RPG. But for all its big bills and effective marketing it's just a stiff brawler with a sub par driving simulator and a disappointing shooter. The story seems pretty ok, if you overlook all the shit your character does while he's on the street...worst undercover cop ever. A slight disappointment, but I set myself up romanticizing Hong Kong.
Where I expected to most get burned was Transformers: Fall of Cybertron -- Have you seen those trailers?
I was totally hooked, but I knew there was no way this game was going to live up to those videos. Going in expecting to be disappointed set me up to be pleasantly surprised. The game play is solid, the voice work is good, the story is well told. It's a challenging and fun game. The Multiplayer is enjoyable as well. I normally don't play shooters, but this is fun. It would be more fun if I was playing on a console I think, the PC population is pretty low making it hard to find a game sometimes. But I'm happy enough with the solo game that I feel it was worth the price.
Finally Guild Wars 2. I am really excited about this. I have a lot of expectations going into tomorrow night when Pre Launch starts and going into the coming months when I hope to learn that there is enough content present to keep me from buying Assassin's Creed 3 on the PS3 (A PS3 that I don't own)
A side effect of these big titles has been a smaller titles that I've purchased from steam in the process. Orcs Must Die 2 is amazing! I'm having a lot of fun with Tower Wars, even though I just play the 3 classic Tower Defense maps because I'm afraid of other players. It's like Solitaire or Mine Sweeper.
I didn't have expectations for these titles, and I am thrilled to play them. On the one hand I feel like we'd all be better off going into our hobby like this, but without the passion how often are you really going to get that payoff?
The last title I "Bought" at launch was Diablo 3, but I'd been locked into that since last October with my World of Warcraft Subscription. Prior to that, Mass Effect 3. Before that, Arkham City. (Ok fine, SWTOR, but that's different)
I am now looking around my workspace trying to figure out what the game before that was. Darkspore? Mostly I just keep to my MMO's
As a person immersed in gaming I am frequently not marketed to. Historically those big budgets reach out to the prime time TV viewers and magazine readers. This has started to change, Hulu and Youtube Ads have started featuring more gaming content as well as more internet based fan(ish) news sites trying to monetize their hobby business. I have been seeing a lot more of the big Budget games of the summer and fall season. August in particular has been a big month. Sleeping Dogs, Transformers and Guild Wars 2 all called to me.
Sleeping Dogs reminded me of Hong Kong Action Movies, and Shadowfist and Feng Shui the Action Movie Pen and Paper RPG. But for all its big bills and effective marketing it's just a stiff brawler with a sub par driving simulator and a disappointing shooter. The story seems pretty ok, if you overlook all the shit your character does while he's on the street...worst undercover cop ever. A slight disappointment, but I set myself up romanticizing Hong Kong.
Where I expected to most get burned was Transformers: Fall of Cybertron -- Have you seen those trailers?
I was totally hooked, but I knew there was no way this game was going to live up to those videos. Going in expecting to be disappointed set me up to be pleasantly surprised. The game play is solid, the voice work is good, the story is well told. It's a challenging and fun game. The Multiplayer is enjoyable as well. I normally don't play shooters, but this is fun. It would be more fun if I was playing on a console I think, the PC population is pretty low making it hard to find a game sometimes. But I'm happy enough with the solo game that I feel it was worth the price.
Finally Guild Wars 2. I am really excited about this. I have a lot of expectations going into tomorrow night when Pre Launch starts and going into the coming months when I hope to learn that there is enough content present to keep me from buying Assassin's Creed 3 on the PS3 (A PS3 that I don't own)
A side effect of these big titles has been a smaller titles that I've purchased from steam in the process. Orcs Must Die 2 is amazing! I'm having a lot of fun with Tower Wars, even though I just play the 3 classic Tower Defense maps because I'm afraid of other players. It's like Solitaire or Mine Sweeper.
I didn't have expectations for these titles, and I am thrilled to play them. On the one hand I feel like we'd all be better off going into our hobby like this, but without the passion how often are you really going to get that payoff?
Monday, August 20, 2012
Where did SWTOR's Subscribers Go?
Star Wars the Old Republic had a lot of hype building up to its
launch. It sold over 1.5 million copies and had one of the smoothest
launches of any MMO in the last several years. After that, things took a
turn. Bad press, bugs and perceived lack of end game led to
hemorrhaging subscription numbers. From 1.7 million to 1.3 million and
now somewhere between 500 thousand and a million. Why did this happen?
What drove the MMO player base to turn their back on this product? There
were several reasons, all of them had a significant impact.
At launch, more than 100 servers were created in an attempt to keep the launch smooth. This successfully avoided any negative press during the head start and official game launch, months later this decision created a problem. Populations shrunk by 25% which left many servers underpopulated. This problem magnified itself as bored players flocked to active servers to create alternate characters or took a break waiting for new content. Underpopulated servers became virtual ghost towns.
A major part of the player retention strategy was the assumption that most players would want to see all eight personal stories. When you consider Bioware's trademark branching morality based approach to story telling it was easy to assume that many players may even want to try out different options in each of the stories. In practice this is not what happened, for a couple of reasons. Primarily lack of depth. This is true in the personal story as well as the world arcs that all classes experience. While you can make light side or dark side decisions there is no nuance, no interplay between quests. Furthermore very little changes from your actions. You can choose to kill someone, they die. You can choose to let them live. they leave and are never seen or spoken of again. They may as well be dead. Even the dialog lacks depth. For the most part most NPC's only react to the way you treat them in the following audio clip, after that everything is forgotten. These factors make replaying the same story unsatisfying. It doesn't take long to realize that choices don't really matter. There is no impact outside of the final cut scene on the planet. No one on this planet will be seen again regardless of what you do. This doesn't even address the large portion of MMO players who only care about End Game. This is a culture that has been built over the last decade and the SWTOR team should have been prepared for it.
For End Game SWTOR launched with 3 Warzones for instanced PVP, 6 Hard Mode Flashpoints for challenging small group play, 1 and a half Operations for challenging large group play, and two daily mission hubs for solo and small group play. They also had an Open PVP area. On paper this all seems pretty reasonable. There were things for most players to do. Unfortunately not enough thought was put into player behavior and most of these systems started to fall apart. The ratio of Empire to Republic players on most servers was greater than 2 to 1. This destroyed the open world PVP area, and also vastly diminished the enjoyment of Warzones. One of the three Warzones allowed for same faction combat, resulting in a much higher occurrence of this Warzone for the majority of players. Huttball went from being the greatest instanced PVP map ever designed to being that game you were tired of playing. Hard Mode Flashpoints were hard for the average player, enrage timers required solid performance out of every group member. With no group finder, finding a group could take up to an hour of shouting in general chat on the fleet, and no guarantee of success. This lead to frustration for casual players. Organized players were more interested in Operations. In addition to the second Operation not being complete at launch, both were far too easy. For most groups the only challenge came from unintended bugs in the boss encounters.
As time passed the development team worked to correct many of these issues. Server populations have been corrected by a merge that not only increased the active user base at all times of the day but also fixed the faction imbalance on most servers. The addition of a robust group finder allows for the average player to successfully participate in Hard Mode Flashpoints. A third Operation was added that was significantly more challenging than the first two. All Warzones now allow same faction play, resulting in a much more diverse play experience. Unfortunately problems continue to arise.
Layoffs in the community team have left the players feeling cut off from the development team. Information about where the game is going comes infrequently and often with little detail.
A major combat overhaul with massive class balancing occurred in 1.2. This, combined with delays in the ranked PVP system, has left the PVP community unsatisfied.
The developers have promised a rework on Nightmare mode Operations that will create the intense difficulty hard core guilds seek. It has been months since 1.3 was released and this promise has not been realized.
Earlier this year, at the Guild Summit, players were told new class story would be coming later this year. Most recently when Makeb was announced the community was told that it would not include the progression of class stories and to expect that sometime next year.
Star Wars: The Old Republic put all of their eggs in one basket -- Story. More specifically the ownership of your own personal Star Wars story. That basket has two giant holes in it. Truthfully, your choices don't matter, once you realize that some of the magic is gone. More importantly, at 50 your story stops. Much effort was put in place to attempt to address the fragmented community and their individual desires, this shotgun approach has resulted in overall improvements in all areas, but has failed to place SWTOR ahead of its competition in any one area. Meanwhile the most front facing feature languishes.
At launch, more than 100 servers were created in an attempt to keep the launch smooth. This successfully avoided any negative press during the head start and official game launch, months later this decision created a problem. Populations shrunk by 25% which left many servers underpopulated. This problem magnified itself as bored players flocked to active servers to create alternate characters or took a break waiting for new content. Underpopulated servers became virtual ghost towns.
A major part of the player retention strategy was the assumption that most players would want to see all eight personal stories. When you consider Bioware's trademark branching morality based approach to story telling it was easy to assume that many players may even want to try out different options in each of the stories. In practice this is not what happened, for a couple of reasons. Primarily lack of depth. This is true in the personal story as well as the world arcs that all classes experience. While you can make light side or dark side decisions there is no nuance, no interplay between quests. Furthermore very little changes from your actions. You can choose to kill someone, they die. You can choose to let them live. they leave and are never seen or spoken of again. They may as well be dead. Even the dialog lacks depth. For the most part most NPC's only react to the way you treat them in the following audio clip, after that everything is forgotten. These factors make replaying the same story unsatisfying. It doesn't take long to realize that choices don't really matter. There is no impact outside of the final cut scene on the planet. No one on this planet will be seen again regardless of what you do. This doesn't even address the large portion of MMO players who only care about End Game. This is a culture that has been built over the last decade and the SWTOR team should have been prepared for it.
For End Game SWTOR launched with 3 Warzones for instanced PVP, 6 Hard Mode Flashpoints for challenging small group play, 1 and a half Operations for challenging large group play, and two daily mission hubs for solo and small group play. They also had an Open PVP area. On paper this all seems pretty reasonable. There were things for most players to do. Unfortunately not enough thought was put into player behavior and most of these systems started to fall apart. The ratio of Empire to Republic players on most servers was greater than 2 to 1. This destroyed the open world PVP area, and also vastly diminished the enjoyment of Warzones. One of the three Warzones allowed for same faction combat, resulting in a much higher occurrence of this Warzone for the majority of players. Huttball went from being the greatest instanced PVP map ever designed to being that game you were tired of playing. Hard Mode Flashpoints were hard for the average player, enrage timers required solid performance out of every group member. With no group finder, finding a group could take up to an hour of shouting in general chat on the fleet, and no guarantee of success. This lead to frustration for casual players. Organized players were more interested in Operations. In addition to the second Operation not being complete at launch, both were far too easy. For most groups the only challenge came from unintended bugs in the boss encounters.
As time passed the development team worked to correct many of these issues. Server populations have been corrected by a merge that not only increased the active user base at all times of the day but also fixed the faction imbalance on most servers. The addition of a robust group finder allows for the average player to successfully participate in Hard Mode Flashpoints. A third Operation was added that was significantly more challenging than the first two. All Warzones now allow same faction play, resulting in a much more diverse play experience. Unfortunately problems continue to arise.
Layoffs in the community team have left the players feeling cut off from the development team. Information about where the game is going comes infrequently and often with little detail.
A major combat overhaul with massive class balancing occurred in 1.2. This, combined with delays in the ranked PVP system, has left the PVP community unsatisfied.
The developers have promised a rework on Nightmare mode Operations that will create the intense difficulty hard core guilds seek. It has been months since 1.3 was released and this promise has not been realized.
Earlier this year, at the Guild Summit, players were told new class story would be coming later this year. Most recently when Makeb was announced the community was told that it would not include the progression of class stories and to expect that sometime next year.
Star Wars: The Old Republic put all of their eggs in one basket -- Story. More specifically the ownership of your own personal Star Wars story. That basket has two giant holes in it. Truthfully, your choices don't matter, once you realize that some of the magic is gone. More importantly, at 50 your story stops. Much effort was put in place to attempt to address the fragmented community and their individual desires, this shotgun approach has resulted in overall improvements in all areas, but has failed to place SWTOR ahead of its competition in any one area. Meanwhile the most front facing feature languishes.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Someone make Online Roborally
I have been hoping for an electronic version of Roborally for over a decade. In 2008 I got...something. Game Table Online has a simple java game. It's legit and it works, but it's very simplistic looking. It is only capable of attracting the most hardcore fan. I feel like Roborally is destined for more. This property is a great candidate for browser based play in the Unity Engine and/or IOS devices.
Let's back up. What is Roborally? Roborally is a board game. The object of the game is to guide your game piece, a robot, through a factory filled with obstacles to numbered flags faster than the other players. Movement is determined by laying down a sequence of 5 cards out of 9 dealt at the start of each turn. The challenge in the game comes from correctly plotting your movement with the cards you are given and predicting the actions of the other players. The depth of the game is enhanced by additional elements.
The core product includes 6 boards, these can be used individually or combined in any way to increase the scope of a single play session. (14 Additional boards are available through expansions)
In addition to movement cards there are option cards that change the behavior of your piece, allowing for increased movement, ability to damage other players' robots, or to avoid certain hazards on the board.
Why would a robust online version of Roborally be preferable to the physical game?
The boards are the size of a standard board game. If you are interested in a multi-board game of Roborally you either need a large table or a willingness to play on the floor. Even the space needed for players to set up their turns is greater than most games.
Keeping track of the different elements in the game can be frustrating to some players. Placing movement cards, tracking damage, understanding what each of the board elements will do as well as where and what the other players' robots are up to. Giving the player a simple and functional UI would certainly help.
Easy customization. Different game modes could be applied, such as capture the flag, or resource gathering, I've even seen rules for Roborally Football. Features for novice level players like movement previews as well as other game options like which board obstacles are functioning and rules for damage and re spawns could be controlled in a pregame interface.
Replays.
Time can be an issue also, a large Roborally game with 6 boards and 8 players could take hours to play. Using the design of games like Words with Friends or Hero Academy, you could have multiple games active and submit your turn for each within the time limit allowed. Sometimes these games could have no time limit and games could go on for days between friends, but within their schedule. And at the end of a three week game, Replay!
How do you Monetize something like this?
In the end it's all about money. It's a great game, but people aren't going to pay to play individual games. They may pay a nominal fee for an app on the app store, but that isn't going to fund development costs. Some sort of cash shop would have to be part of the business model. The trick is figuring out how to build in fees without segmenting the player base.
Customization. Everyone loves hats! Sell dye packs, custom skins, and/or modification parts to the robots. (Flashing lights, spinning rims, anything that doesn't interfere with option cards)
Limit on number of concurrent games.
Access to a level editor.
Alright, someone figure out how to get a hold of the digital rights to this IP and start up a kickstarter!
Meanwhile I will, when really itching, play a game against ridiculously skilled computer players on Game Table Online, because I am not paying dollars for that simple of an interface.
Let's back up. What is Roborally? Roborally is a board game. The object of the game is to guide your game piece, a robot, through a factory filled with obstacles to numbered flags faster than the other players. Movement is determined by laying down a sequence of 5 cards out of 9 dealt at the start of each turn. The challenge in the game comes from correctly plotting your movement with the cards you are given and predicting the actions of the other players. The depth of the game is enhanced by additional elements.
The core product includes 6 boards, these can be used individually or combined in any way to increase the scope of a single play session. (14 Additional boards are available through expansions)
In addition to movement cards there are option cards that change the behavior of your piece, allowing for increased movement, ability to damage other players' robots, or to avoid certain hazards on the board.
Why would a robust online version of Roborally be preferable to the physical game?
The boards are the size of a standard board game. If you are interested in a multi-board game of Roborally you either need a large table or a willingness to play on the floor. Even the space needed for players to set up their turns is greater than most games.
Keeping track of the different elements in the game can be frustrating to some players. Placing movement cards, tracking damage, understanding what each of the board elements will do as well as where and what the other players' robots are up to. Giving the player a simple and functional UI would certainly help.
Easy customization. Different game modes could be applied, such as capture the flag, or resource gathering, I've even seen rules for Roborally Football. Features for novice level players like movement previews as well as other game options like which board obstacles are functioning and rules for damage and re spawns could be controlled in a pregame interface.
Replays.
Time can be an issue also, a large Roborally game with 6 boards and 8 players could take hours to play. Using the design of games like Words with Friends or Hero Academy, you could have multiple games active and submit your turn for each within the time limit allowed. Sometimes these games could have no time limit and games could go on for days between friends, but within their schedule. And at the end of a three week game, Replay!
How do you Monetize something like this?
In the end it's all about money. It's a great game, but people aren't going to pay to play individual games. They may pay a nominal fee for an app on the app store, but that isn't going to fund development costs. Some sort of cash shop would have to be part of the business model. The trick is figuring out how to build in fees without segmenting the player base.
Customization. Everyone loves hats! Sell dye packs, custom skins, and/or modification parts to the robots. (Flashing lights, spinning rims, anything that doesn't interfere with option cards)
Limit on number of concurrent games.
Access to a level editor.
Alright, someone figure out how to get a hold of the digital rights to this IP and start up a kickstarter!
Meanwhile I will, when really itching, play a game against ridiculously skilled computer players on Game Table Online, because I am not paying dollars for that simple of an interface.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Blizzard is in the wrong business
I mean that in the most flattering way.
Have you seen the title cinematic for Mists of Pandaria?
This is a very different type of opening than we have seen before.
The original World of Warcraft opening used a simple metaphor to great effect - The Drums of War. In a series of scenes we are introduced to the races and classes of World of Warcraft. Each cut happens faster and faster, like the beating of a drum, or a quickening heartbeat. It instils excitement and anticipation.
The opening to The Burning Crusade went with the different tone. The general message was a challenge, but it wasn't unified. There was a lot of filler, showing off things that people had come to love about World of Warcraft - such as Polymorph, Murlocks, and Mounts. It also took time to introduce the new races, the stoicism of the Draenei and the sinister lust for power in the Blood Elves. That was framed with the message: if you want to fight Illidan you'll need to gain 10 levels and claw your way through three tiers of punishing raid content.
Wrath of the Lich King introduced us to something new. The sole focus was on the Lich King, no mention of the players. This set up the most cinematic of the World of Warcraft expansions. Each new patch focused on a significant amount of NPC character development.
Cataclysm brought the players back into the cinematic, but subtly. The opening showed us what happened to the world; showed us the terrible power of Deathwing; showed us places we could recognize being destroyed by our new foe. This engaged the player, making us feel helpless and driving us to fight back against this force of nature.
This new opening is something different, something...more.
First we have a Darkness to Light metaphor that perhaps gets a little heavy handed at the end but is still very effective.
The character models used are amazing. The level of detail is staggering, and still, even with the human, you can tell immediately that it is a Warcraft art asset.
When it builds to the fight scene it feels perfectly in place. Something straight out of a 1980's Jet Li or Jackie Chan period film (Once Upon a Time in China series, Drunken Master, or Chinese Ghost Story). Demonstrating amazing choreography with just a dash of comedy. It fits perfectly right down to the conclusion where having been beaten the Horde and Alliance characters resign their conflict with each other and their new foe to appreciate the beauty of the land that they have discovered.
The only odd moment for me is the very end with the weird tongue smacking, I'm not exactly sure what that was about. Maybe they thought just sniffing the cherry blossoms was too stereotypical, but didn't want to anger to Parent's council by having him take a swig of beer, because let's face it, that's what Chen Stormstout thinks is worth fighting for.
The music, the story telling, the animation. It all combines to become something more than you'd expect from a video game.
Blizzard is in the wrong business.
Also, before people start shouting nerf monks, obviously the monk is level 90 and the Orc and Human are level 85,
Have you seen the title cinematic for Mists of Pandaria?
This is a very different type of opening than we have seen before.
The original World of Warcraft opening used a simple metaphor to great effect - The Drums of War. In a series of scenes we are introduced to the races and classes of World of Warcraft. Each cut happens faster and faster, like the beating of a drum, or a quickening heartbeat. It instils excitement and anticipation.
The opening to The Burning Crusade went with the different tone. The general message was a challenge, but it wasn't unified. There was a lot of filler, showing off things that people had come to love about World of Warcraft - such as Polymorph, Murlocks, and Mounts. It also took time to introduce the new races, the stoicism of the Draenei and the sinister lust for power in the Blood Elves. That was framed with the message: if you want to fight Illidan you'll need to gain 10 levels and claw your way through three tiers of punishing raid content.
Wrath of the Lich King introduced us to something new. The sole focus was on the Lich King, no mention of the players. This set up the most cinematic of the World of Warcraft expansions. Each new patch focused on a significant amount of NPC character development.
Cataclysm brought the players back into the cinematic, but subtly. The opening showed us what happened to the world; showed us the terrible power of Deathwing; showed us places we could recognize being destroyed by our new foe. This engaged the player, making us feel helpless and driving us to fight back against this force of nature.
This new opening is something different, something...more.
First we have a Darkness to Light metaphor that perhaps gets a little heavy handed at the end but is still very effective.
The character models used are amazing. The level of detail is staggering, and still, even with the human, you can tell immediately that it is a Warcraft art asset.
When it builds to the fight scene it feels perfectly in place. Something straight out of a 1980's Jet Li or Jackie Chan period film (Once Upon a Time in China series, Drunken Master, or Chinese Ghost Story). Demonstrating amazing choreography with just a dash of comedy. It fits perfectly right down to the conclusion where having been beaten the Horde and Alliance characters resign their conflict with each other and their new foe to appreciate the beauty of the land that they have discovered.
The only odd moment for me is the very end with the weird tongue smacking, I'm not exactly sure what that was about. Maybe they thought just sniffing the cherry blossoms was too stereotypical, but didn't want to anger to Parent's council by having him take a swig of beer, because let's face it, that's what Chen Stormstout thinks is worth fighting for.
The music, the story telling, the animation. It all combines to become something more than you'd expect from a video game.
Blizzard is in the wrong business.
Also, before people start shouting nerf monks, obviously the monk is level 90 and the Orc and Human are level 85,
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