Month: November 2011

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[GW2] Interview with ArenaNet’s Eric Flannum

“Iteration” is a word emphasized by ArenaNet. It seems something greater than mere polish, and I asked ArenaNet if they could entertain a few questions about their design and development practice. What does it really mean to iterate? Guild Wars 2 Lead Designer Eric Flannum graciously took some time to talk about the term and what it means to the studio and Guild Wars 2.

Q: ArenaNet touts “iteration” a lot in interviews and official blog posts. Is it not the industry norm to iterate during MMO development? Are other games’ leads more bullheaded and less willing to deviate from the plan? What makes ArenaNet’s iteration of Guild Wars 2 special? Continue reading [GW2] Interview with ArenaNet’s Eric Flannum

Star Wars: The Ol’ Impressions

Thankfully my server or time played  was perfect. I never had a queue, but that seemed to be a rarity. Anyway, I felt like I got a solid play session or two in. I would say getting I got enough time to make a solidly informed consumer decision.

First, it’s rock solid. A lot of love and polish has gone in to making the game really smooth in pretty much every factor. Sure, there are a few minor bugs here and there, but if there was a vision to how the game would be, it was pretty much implemented to the fullest.

Second, the vision is of course something branching off of a vanilla MMO, which World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift et al. hold domain. There are some twists, which I am still digesting for future posts here, but my gut feeling is they don’t change much. It’s like the difference between presenting a nicely cooked steak on a plate and one that has been sliced for the guest to show a nicely cooked interior. It’s a steak either way. The two things that hit me were interactionable cut scenes replacing quest text and groups of mobs as being a single encounter. I’d be really interested to see how different those two things feel after 20-30 levels of gameplay.

Finally, I would love to play, but I don’t feel like shelling out $50 plus a subscription to play something essentially super-shiny vanilla. With holiday gifts needing spending, I might pick it up next year. I think I would enjoy the journey of going through each class’ story. So much of it feels though like “play together, alone.” I am a little worried at what might become of the end game too. I know once I got a whiff of Rift’s near-release end game I quit the game. For now, I think I will just look forward to stories and spoilers.

–Ravious

Unintended Behavior (of developers)

Thanks, it feels really good to read this article and you’re exactly on the ball. I don’t think people on this forum realize how hard we at Trendy work to make this game for you guys. Many of us have never personally been paid and have been living off of our own savings (of which are almost nothing, since we’re so young) to make this game. We often put in over 70-80 hours a week and more. Yes we make mistakes (that much is clear), but we are not setting out to nor are we setting out to take anyone’s money.

And I can’t comment about our financial issue, but I’d implore everyone to remember… Steam, Epic, D3, Reverb, Contractors, Investors, et. all get cuts from the game and its DLC. We’re putting in all this extra work and putting out all this extra content and patches because we want to and we want to have a product you enjoy playing. Dungeon Defenders was never intended to be a game that people played as much as you all have played it (especially not as much as an MMO) and we’re working really hard to get you more content and more gameplay out of the content you have.
– Pmasher, Trendy Entertainment

What I’m wondering is how the game came to be one that encouraged and supported playing that much. (I’m not sure much “that much” is, but you can imagine it’s pretty high for forum-dwellers, presumably 100-200 hours already for people playing it at an MMO rate.) It seems easier just not to support the development direction they took, with many patches and ongoing development. You need some ongoing development if you want to sell DLC, but I never heard anyone complain about Orcs Must Die! for not being an MMO. (Although I have not heard more than 2 or 3 sentences about Orcs Must Die!, so either it is not getting much buzz or I’m just reading the wrong things. Active development does fuel ongoing discussion.) I think of Runic Games, which seems to have taken suggestions and plugged them into Torchlight 2 rather than extending Torchlight 1. Once development stops, you can love or hate the game for what it is, rather than what you still might wish it to become.

I can see several reasons why development is continuing post-release, but the patches are increasingly supporting long-term, heavily dedicated play. You could take it in a different direction, one where you say, “You beat the game. Congratulations!” and move on, maybe visiting every couple of months to check out DLC. (Add a player notification option there, some way to call people back.) Instead, the direction seems to be one that is putting increasing demands on Trendy without generating a lot more revenue. Maybe future DLC will add some revenue, say release another four-pack of maps every two months for $5-$10 with an “ongoing story,” although the story is not “going” much to start.

Runic also took the path of encouraging modding, rather than running an official server. That reduces control but limits the unending commitment to maintaining a service after you have sold the game. I have no idea how much effort TrendyNet involves, but there are still enough hardcore Diablo II players to support gold- and item-selling sites for that today. If the fanbase is unpleasable now, imagine if the official server goes away.

: Zubon

Endurance Mode

I made a run at that Dungeon Defenders endgame. I have run Survival before, but here we go, real attempt to see how far I can go. It was physically painful. I was on the same map for hours. I’m told that a better geared player could get through wave 25 in less than 7 hours; I must have been in the 5 or 6 range when I ended at Wave 19. I was fatigued and starting to have problems seeing things, although you don’t need to see too well to when you’re on the same map for hours. I went with a small map, Alchemical Laboratory, and I don’t know if a larger one would feel more varied or just have more running around/waiting. I did get that decent ranged DPS weapon (48k DPS before P Shot, may upgrade armor to boost that) I wanted and a bunch of improved armor, so I can try more things now.

The latest patch that improved the loot ramp (better stuff earlier) came some hours after I tried my Survival run, so it might even be worthwhile to try a bit again. With vastly improved damage, it could go much more quickly. But there is definitely a problem with incentivizing players to play on the same map for hours. It’s not even setting up a camp and farming; this is the actual game, being played as intended and designed with progression. I will definitely need to be in the right mood for that kind of thing, and I’ll need voice chat or something to distract me.

: Zubon

DCUO Reviewlet

I’ve had a mostly enjoyable time with the low-level content. DC’s big advantage is its iconic characters; how many other MMOs get to bring IP with the heft of Superman or Batman to the table? (Even SW:TOR loses here because it is TOR.) Play is dynamic and I have enjoyed both the setting and particularly the use of significant but less popular DC villains early on.

My experience is mostly low-level Metropolis. Unlike CoX, you can fly from day one, so you get the immediate experience of soaring over rooftops. It’s soothing, and the urge to wander around and look at things is rewarded by collections and clickies scattered across the map. I have really enjoyed reaching the iconic villain at the end of each arc, both seeing them in combat and then the cut scene where the villain speaks about his/her plans, hatred, etc. The take on Grodd is centrist, neither comic nor horrific (I’ve seen both in comics), while the Doctor Psycho scene is one of the best things I have seen in-game in a while. You never knew you wanted a scene with some Wonder Woman villain you’ve probably never heard of, but it sketches the character with surprising depth in one minute, including the use of images to show things left unsaid and explain about our unreliable narrator. (This is a common problem in comic books and graphic novels: forcing the text to do all the work rather than letting the images carry their own weight.)

The gameplay is simple, basically targeting an enemy and clicking until it falls down. The simple gameplay is explained well. For anything more advanced, you’re mostly on your own, enjoy clicking through menus. You can pick things up and throw them at enemies, although I have yet to find a car I can use like that. The basic enemies are plentiful, not terribly interesting, and only present a challenge in their absurdly quick respawn timers (for all the players in the area). You get to feel like a superhero as you endlessly beat down theoretically even-con enemies.

DCUO is F2P. The main limits for not being a subscriber are (item and character) slots and a cash limit. If you spend $5, you get the medium tier with 6 character slots and some restrictions removed, so that’s going to be worth it if the game has any appeal to you at all.

: Zubon

Achievement Spread

Games with achievements do better. I’ve lost my citation of the Microsoft data analysis that showed this, and it would be a stronger effect there because you have an overall score for total poundage of achievements there, but at least grant it for the sake of argument here because the point lies beyond this. Players are more likely to buy a game, play it more hours, and rate it more highly when it has achievements.

My question is how you set those up. Take two rather different MMOS: DC Universe Online and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. DCUO has hundreds of in-game “feats,” of which 23 are Steam achievements. Most of those are “beat the game as x” or items from the DLC. Puzzle Pirates has 220 Steam achievements, many of which are the ranks of the various mini-games. I haven’t played Puzzle Pirates in a long while, but I’m guessing it is not 9.6 times as much game as DCUO. DCUO gives you an in-game feat after any story arc or minor accomplishment, but outside the game you see one at the start and then come back for a few shinies when you beat the game. Puzzle Pirates thinks it better to give Steam achievements to you constantly.

I’m wondering to what extent these are business or game design decisions, or perhaps very little thought goes into them at most shops. Achievements seem used to note progress, to highlight nice touches, to reward people for doing difficult or poorly designed content, to incentivize perverse behavior in team games, or to reward very long term play of the “collect 1 billion x” sort. See Torchlight for examples of most, from “Find the entrance to the mine” through the course of the game, over the game’s various difficulties, and into long hauls (100 levels) and the WTF of “talk to the horse 100 times.” Alternately, see Grotesque Tactics with just 10 achievements, 4 of which you can/must complete in the tutorial, and I assume the game slows down that pace or else the whole thing must be about two hours. (I and many others must have picked this up in a sale pack, because 62% of owners never made it as far as the first fight.)

There must be some optimal system of achievements that serves as verbal praise to encourage and reward the player. (I’m also fond of games that give bonuses for them, like DCUO’s feats that grant skill points.) It’s strange how rarely achievements are treated as a serious development subject, since they affect how players play games and feel about them. Like drugs and other things that affect your meat brain, psychological tricks can still be quite effective even if you know they’re there.

: Zubon

If you don’t care about achievements, you don’t need to comment to tell us that again. Really.

The Inevitability of $1,000 Mounts

Ever check out Gamebreaker.TV? It’s a really nice site, and I particularly enjoy the enthusiasm of the crew there, and our good friend Rubi of Massively joins in the fray there to make sure their MMO thoughts are refereed. Anyway, whenever microtransactions in MMOs comes up over there, so does the $1000 mount. I have to agree, the experiment of having one would be awesome. Yet they always add the caveat of “not game breaking.”

Well, hey, RockPaperShotgun tells us that a company decided to make a 1000 euro item. The 10th drone, normally available in game after what appears to be a long grind of getting drones 1-9 was made available for one-thousand quackers (like smackers, but European) for only four days. Then 2,000,000 euros fell in to the company’s lap, meaning for those already under the influence of Thanksgiving wine, they sold 2,000 of the drones.

Let’s recap: Continue reading The Inevitability of $1,000 Mounts

More Midriffs

Dungeon Defenders will be implementing gender-swapped versions its 4 classes. These will be new classes (update: new skills, same towers), not a cosmetic option for the existing 4.

The concept art shows that the Ranger is wearing only slightly more than the Huntress. And hey, so are all the female characters. Every female character needs a bare midriff, it seems, not just gnome death knights. To the chagrin of some players, the Countess is not running around in her underpants, with most parts covered except that midriff; she also lacks a gorget, but at least she’s not in a chainmail bikini.

I do like the Adept’s glasses. Jinkies!

: Zubon

Rollercoaster Going Uphill

Not that one.

The Dungeon Defenders patch notes thread is interesting just in its volume. These are not even all the patches, since bug fixes and such may be stealth-patched. The game has been averaging around a patch per workday, with multiple patches on some days. I think that means they released during late beta, and you have already heard my nattering about how this nullifies the possibility of a long-term view.

The next patch is chock full of quality of life improvements, such as auto-fire (which was previously player-implemented via developer-approved macro). Easier respec, more benefits for upgrades, use-based pet experience, restricting random events that can cause the game to be unavoidably lost in one shot, and adjusting the loot tables so you will not need to play Survival for 6 hours straight to get the best loot.

I’ve sincere about that: 6 hours. The best loot now comes from Survival waves, improving with each wave, and getting to those later waves takes hours. With the new changes, getting to wave 25 will still take 6 hours, but maybe you can get the benefits from a 4-hour stay on that map. That’s still pretty long and boring, but at least your crystal will no longer seemingly self-destruct from the items removed in the next patch. You still need to be able to play for that long, keep a Steam and Trendy connection that long, and to want to sit through (tens of?) thousands of enemies per wave, each of whom will be in 5-digit hit points by the later waves.

I don’t see a single “oh man!” change on the list, but it is addressing the details of the endgame they’ve created, not the core difficulties with the endgame itself.

: Zubon