Author: Zubon

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Import Quality

I have somehow gotten this far without blogging about the Alchian-Allen Theorem, but it is an economic principle you should understand in this international games market. It also applies to cartoons and dating, so stick with me through the econ.

Let’s start with those cartoons. You should expect anime in the English-language market to be of higher average quality (or at least broader appeal) than the anime in Japan. Why? It is not worth the cost to translate and localize crap shows. Fan-subbed series should be of lower average quality because companies will have already brought over the more lucrative (higher quality and/or more popular) titles. (Notable exceptions: bootleg fan-subs torrented while something is still mid-season; shows that are “too Japanese” to survive localization but are great if you know the culture.)

More generally in entertainment, you should expect the titles imported to be some of the best ones that country/language/culture has to offer. At least, you should expect them to have broad appeal, which is often but not always a sign of high quality. (Can I stop doing that disclaimer? Assume “better” means “better bottom line,” which is often associated with quality but sometimes with appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is not always bad either.) Lineage and Aion are probably the Korean MMOs with the most appeal in the Western market, ditto the Final Fantasies from Japan. Weird licensing issues pop up, but if the money is good enough, you can expect those highly profitable games to come over. Second tier, maybe. The equivalent of our crap games? Not worth shipping. You may have noticed other titles coming over using lower fixed costs, notably less effort at localization (contribute your favorite lousy, completely unprofessional translation) and less advertising, and you may have noticed that many of them are really poor. (The same applies in the reverse direction. WoW has many Chinese subscribers; has Age of Conan been localized for China?) As fixed costs drop, you should expect more options but lower quality or more narrow appeal. Recettear had a great localization, but a limited number of people will get excited about a fantasy adventure game where you run the item shop.

Oh, I promised you sex. This applies to human interactions as well. If you have a long-distance relationship, you will probably expect it to advance by leaps and bounds when you meet in-person, because you did not fly 5000 kilometers just to watch TV together. Similarly, if you go to something like E3, PAX, BlizzCon, etc., you are going to expect a really good experience when you drop hundreds of dollars to attend; if you go to something more local, your expectations will not be as dialed up, and you are not as invested. Let’s re-phrase that: if you live in Anaheim, you might go to BlizzCon if you think it looks pretty good, but if you live in Boston, you are only going to BlizzCon if you think it will be really awesome; same convention, different thresholds and expectations. These kinds of raised expectations can go well or lead to really huge disappointments as all the dreams (and money) you had invested in this person or convention crash on the shoals of reality.

: Zubon

Quote of the Week

Inertia is the inclination of moving objects to keep moving, and for stationary objects to stay put. Once you get going in EVE, it’s easy to keep going. The skill queue charts your course, you have your market ops and your research and the ongoing political situation with your allies and enemies, and it’s just easy to keep moving in that space.

But should you stop — your skill queue empties out and you forget what you were training to do, nobody in game remembers you anymore, your research seems pointless and you are no longer connected to the game.
— Tipa

It applies generally.

: Zubon

Double Billing

A friend of mine is finishing law school and preparing for the bar. He has an ethics exam to take, and since he is a WoW player, I am worried. There are presumably ethical rules against charging more than one client for the same work (although it is normal billing to do work for multiple clients in the same hour and round the charge for each up to a full hour). MMOs teach us that you should always get paid twice. If you are killing a monster, it should be for a quest or in a dungeon on the way towards a boss that drops something you need, ideally one that counts towards an achievement and drops components you need for crafting. It is even better when you can find multiple quests for the same enemies, multiple achievements that need them, etc. This poor law student has years of Skinner box training to undo.

: Zubon

Dailies and Deeds

If you have played LotRO past the introductory instances, you are familiar with the slayer deeds (achievements). Defeat 30 wolves in The Shire to get a title; great, I will fight at least 30 while questing. Completing each unlocks an advanced version to defeat twice as many. Normal questing will probably get you somewhere in the 45 to 60 range, so you can grind a bit to complete the advanced deed and get your virtue point, maybe come back in 5-10 levels when you can farm very quickly. Then you get closer to the original endgame and the basic slayer deed is to kill 120 of something. Holy crap, kill 360 wights in Angmar, really?

The addition of skirmishes and (more) daily quests has helped this feel less grindy. Sure, I need to defeat 300+ wolves in Enedwaith, but there is a pair of daily quests that gets me at least 10, and I use those dailies to get rep, IXP, and barter items. I might be less cavalier about that prospect because my main is a Hunter, so I can casually zip around to a dozen hubs in a day, but there is a built-in way to spread out the grind and get more reward from it. It also makes those wood trolls in Enedwaith look really painful to grind, but maybe I have not found the deed for them. Skirmishes are much the same: daily reward, and those wolves in The Shire practically come to you.

: Zubon

A Conundrum of Commitment

My wife says I lack speeds between 0 and 60.

If Rift offered a lifetime subscription plan, I would most likely take it. If it used a carnival model, so I would not need to pay to revisit characters after a break, I would most likely be there. The monthly subscription model instead puts me in the unfortunate place of having repeated psychic costs every unit time, along with the feeling that I need to “get my money’s worth” (which should take all of one night, relative to other entertainment costs) and the game structures that make it difficult to meaningfully play more than one at once. MMOs tend to promote serial monogamy over polygamy, so if I have one, moving to a new one is a lot like abandoning the old. You can revisit your exes, but again, psychic costs.

I am interested, and it looks high quality, but I am not over the cost of switching and starting over. Guild Wars 2, however, seems like a gimme, what with box cost only.

: Zubon

Baby Warden

As implied, I am leveling up a Warden in The Lord of the Rings Online. My main has always been a Hunter, and there is something distinctly annoying about having the most common class in the game. There are things that Hunters do very well, and in LotRO it really matters that travel is one of them, but there are very few that require a Hunter. Most things require a tank, and a few things require a Warden (or perhaps a Captain).

A Warden is my kind of tank, more nimble, less getting hit in the face, with some self-healing and range. The Warden’s taunt mechanic is very different from the Guardian’s. Guardians have taunts that force a target to attack them for some number of seconds. The worst Guardian in the game can still keep the boss’s aggro for X seconds out of every Y, and if DPS pulls aggro in between, he will assume he over-nuked. Wardens instead increase their threat with damage, healing, abilities that directly increase threat, and others that transfer threat from allies. A mediocre Warden will never top the threat list and cannot tank anything; you cannot dislodge targets from a great Warden without a force-taunt.

What I really like about the Warden is the gambit system. My Hunter has bar after bar of abilities, plus a couple bars of teleports before you became able to use those from the skills menu. My Warden has four main buttons, plus a few stances, ranged attacks, and toys. 1 is the Spear (offense), 2 is the Shield (defense), 3 is the Fist (taunt), and 4 is the combo. 4 changes depending on which of 1-3 you use first and in what combination: 11 is a quick stab, 213 boosts all your defenses, and 32 is an area effect taunt/DoT with a self-heal. The most celebrated Warden gambit comes at level 58: Conviction, an area effect heal and threat transfer, letting you grab aggro on every add. There is something glorious about having access to 20+ skills using only a few buttons.

Plus, Wardens are the second-best travel class. I should get access to the “Muster in…” self-teleport line of skills soon.

: Zubon

Evade Not Block

I promised to have some comments about Batman: Arkham Asylum, but I find that Zero Punctuation covers everything I would want to say. Great fun, I should try more stealth-based games since I also enjoyed the alien in Alien vs. Predator.

I never especially got the hang of the combat. This stems from a tendency that applies to other games and metaphorically to real life: I do not tank. I will always always always choose evading over blocking. I use ranged attacks, I kite, I play high Dexterity characters, I CC, I do not take an axe to the face if I can at all help it. This is probably just misplaced meatspace instincts, but my immediate reaction to a troll is to dodge the club rather than parrying it with my hobbit’s dagger.

In some games, this provides a real benefit. Attacks will have secondary effects, so evading attacks also evades debuffs. Other games let blocks or parries also stop the debuff component, whether or not that makes any sense. Some games have shields/armor reduce damage rather than deflect attacks, which means you get the debuff. And did I mention the 100-stone troll with a similarly huge axe planting it in your skull? That could ruin your whole day.

In many games, the proper move is “block and counter.” My plan is closer to “dive and shoot from behind cover.”

: Zubon

Ambush

sneaky warden He will never see this one coming … from five yards away, straight in front of him, on a flat stretch of dirt.

: Zubon

Update: no, that is not using stealth. You can Ambush from stealth, but there is no induction timer in that case. She just walked up to the guy, crouched down with a javelin for five seconds, and planted it in his forehead.