Author: Zubon

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[LoL] Level-Setting or Randomization?

I have been playing a lot of ARAM. My win rate recently is in the 50% range, but it’s streaky: 2-4 in a row either way, rarely win-lose-win-lose. I’m not sure if I have reached my appropriate level with hidden ELO or whether ARAM is just so random that each game is more or less a coin flip of who gets good team composition, who gets utter rubbish players, whose team is randomly the perfect counter to the other…

On the other hand, I seem to have gotten above the point where half the matches are 4 vs 5 because someone AFKs/disconnects. And I am starting to appreciate queue dodges because of that: I would rather have someone reset the whole game than make it an uneven waste of time.

: Zubon

[LoL] ARAM

I have been enjoying the new mode in League of Legends. “All random all middle” is even more frantic fun than Dominion, although almost all strategy is gone in favor of tactics.

  • You can reroll your champion every few games, so it is not fully random. This is especially a good thing for people who bought packs like the one when League of Legends launched. Have seven champions you’ve never played because they were not really your style? Rerolls minimize that punishment.
  • But then you get the chance to try new things. Ryze? More fun than I remembered from the time or two I played him, although see below for why his spells aren’t the best for ARAM.
  • The most important thing about ARAM is that team fights start NOW, often before minions spawn. When the whole game is team fights, the values of various abilities and champions change.
  • AE is obviously far more valuable.
  • Skill shots are also far more valuable. You do not need much skill to toss a skillshot into a crowd and hope for the best. Even given that, skill shots are even more valuable than you think because the enemies are boxed in one lane. You don’t need to spray and pray to appreciate having a shooting alley.
  • Juking is less valuable, with far fewer options, although the people who can pull it off are impressive.
  • Support wins games, above and beyond what you are used to. Healers are fabulous with no healing fountain. Soraka and Sona are great support combined with offensive powerhouses in ARAM.
  • Alistar is similarly amazing, enough to merit his own bullet point. Tank with AE heal and CC, plus the R of “soak all the damage”? I have only seen a team with Alistar lose once.
  • Team composition is very important. Four melees? You’re probably dead already. Opposing team is the MMO contingent of tank, healer, and three DPS? Yep, that’s bad. Because team composition is mostly random, the game can be randomly unwinnable before you even start. This is an intrinsic hazard of randomness, but still generally unfun.
  • It is still hard to find 10 people who can stay connected and play a video game for 10-20 minutes. While I have had a good streak today, I have had days where half my games were 4 vs. 5. This is not a satisfying way to win or to lose, and if there is any punishment for quitting once you see the previous bullet point, it is not visible to the people who must suffer through it.
  • Remember, the most important thing in the game is to make sure everyone knows it is not your fault that your team lost. Everyone else was bad, you had lag, the opposing champs are OP, and team comp sucked gg lol noobs

: Zubon

The F2P In-Game Economy

If you are spending $0 on a game, and the economy is working great for the company and the players who are paying money, but your favored currency is not retaining value well, that means the economy is working. “Working” applies both in the sense of in-game supply and demand (there is WAY more supply of the free currency than of the paid currency, and people with low time value are more prevalent than people with low money value) and the game’s business model. A business model that rewards “not paying” as much as or more than “paying” will not be a business model for long.

Just because you do not like something does not mean it is not working.

: Zubon

[NW] Development at Cryptic

We asked Cryptic Studios to walk us through their development process, from inception to implementation. Also, any examples on something cut rather than making it live? Lindsay Haven, System Designer, please take it away:

Because we have so many creative people that work here in the studio, and each idea is different, not every feature has the exact same development cycle. In general we follow the cycle I’m about to outline. Sometimes we make exceptions for creativity, scope, and feature timeline; however, we do find this process works well for us in most cases.

Rough outline of Neverwinter development process:

  1. Idea!
  2. Outline
  3. Kickoff with leads and implementers
  4. Implementation
  5. Revision of the plan
  6. Implementation
  7. Testing, iteration, testing, iteration…
  8. Final sign off!

Any feature first starts as an idea, here at Cryptic this is usually brought on by some clever person playing in one of our playtests and thinking “this could be more fun if…” or from brainstorming ideas to fix a known issue. Once the idea is born a developer, or sometimes a producer, will outline the new feature, zone, race, or other addition to the game. The outline is then reviewed and updated by relevant department leads and people who will be directly implementing the feature. When a consensus is reached implementation begins!

Sometimes, especially with big features, not everything we envisioned is possible, worth the time investment, or as fun as we thought it would be. If this happens we will revise our original plan and continue implementing. Usually these kinds of changes are small, such as specific quest drops not matching the lore of the adventure zone; rarely they are really big, like changing what technologies we use to create the tens of thousands of equipable items we have in Neverwinter. In the event that we end up cutting a feature instead of implementing, it usually happens here. We have a lot of eyes on features at any given time, because of the early input we get it’s rare that a feature would be cut beyond this point.

Once implementation is nearly complete, we begin testing the feature in playtest meetings in the room we call “The War Room.” This is particularly true with adventure zones, dungeons, PvP zones, and player classes. The war room is where most of us first see a feature come to life and, if you’ll pardon the cliché, where the magic happens. It’s where the mood is measurable, first impressions are made, and bugs are shouted out (usually by more than one person at a time) for the nearest producer to put on a punchlist. Eventually we get to some number of playtests where everyone is happy with the outcome and we give the final development sign off. From there it moves to QA testing where they test it for exploits, typos, and other things the developers missed. Once it passes QA, the feature is done!

The great thing about working at Cryptic Studios is that everyone is an integral part of the development cycle. We frequently have all team playtests and sometimes all company playtests. Everyone is encouraged to send feedback and contribute to all aspects of the game. Because of this, Neverwinter is the culmination of the love, determination, and passion of everyone in the studio. We forward to Neverwinter going live and hearing what you think!

Thank you, Ms. Haven
: Zubon

Alarming Prospects

Roast Pheasant Bringing together the topics of design slippery slopes (particularly with cash shops) and Game of Thrones Ascent, we have this frightening picture. It may be a little hard to see (it is grayed out because nothing in-game calls for it), so let me explain what you’re seeing there. This is the sort of game where you send a knight on a mission and wait for him/her to finish. A Roast Pheasant is an item that will speed that by 28 hours. They do not have anything in-game yet that takes 28 hours to finish, but they have already built the infrastructure for it. And you can auto-complete a 28:05 mission for just $9.50 (or a 56-hour mission for just $19). And hopefully you succeed, because you can fail those things, and I have failed three 80+% chances in a row.

: Zubon

Quick Review: Shad’O

Tower defense themed around light and dark, memory and forgetting. Somewhat interesting, but not undeserving of its 68/100 metacritic score.

Shad’O makes heavy use of a fog of war mechanic. Most of the map is covered except for a few points of light. Building towers extends the light. At the start of a level, you are given a brief glimpse of the whole map, then you get a red line showing where the enemy will be headed beneath the fog.

Shad’O falls into the unfortunate sort of puzzle game that knows exactly how many resources you have and balanced around it. Except for the special levels that can mix in a bit of randomization, so good luck there. You have X much light coming in, so you will have X light worth of enemies. Some companions (towers) are better for some enemies, but if you build a mix, you are pretty much set.

Except on the levels when that will get you killed. Most games sold as “strategy” would shy away from blatantly screwing over the player, dealing devastating damage if you do not prepare specifically for something you did not know was coming. Shad’O has no such compunctions. The first couple of times a new enemy is introduced, you do get the warning “there is only one way to defeat this enemy.” That stops, and you instead need to recognize that a monster spawn sound was unfamiliar, scroll to the spawn spot, and click on the new enemy type before it hides beneath the shadow; next see if you have time and resources to respond to it or do you need to potentially restart? (You don’t need to kill every enemy of every wave, but do you want to wait until the last wave to find out that you were an enemy or two off because of the new surprise monster? Also, Shad’O does not feel the need to limit itself to one of those per wave.) The level will usually have quite a few of whatever this new thing is, so re-do any plans you might have had to focus on this new type, while still having something in place for every previous enemy type. Shad’O will also toss in unmentioned environmental effects, say disabling half your towers while the new enemy is rolling through. There is a spell to counter that. Didn’t spend the skill point to learn it? Go repeat a previous level on Nightmare difficulty to unlock a skill point. There is no skill point reset. It is not all that difficult, but it seems balanced around the assumption that you will play half the level, find out what this level wants from you, then reset and play the level for real.

The level graphics are rather nice. The cutscene graphics and voice acting are rather poor. You must install Quicktime to play, which is a dealbreaker for some people. The story, as far as I played, is somewhat obvious and telegraphed. The sound effects in the first boss fight confirming that are a rather nice touch. Graphics get in your way in that the game is fond of excessively long animations. For whatever reason, the slow animation of summoning a companion is more annoying than waiting on tower construction in another tower defense game.

Somewhat interesting, but neither highly enjoyable nor recommended. I might go back and finish it just to see if it gets more interesting once you unlock all the towers, presumably in the last third of the game. I’ll update if my assessment changes.

: Zubon

Wise Words on Discourse

Especially here on the internet. Ken sees a potentially sobering mirror:

I’ve been feeling very self-conscious. That’s because lots of people are talking about … subjects with which I am somewhat familiar. When they do, I ask myself: when I very frequently talk about things I haven’t bothered to learn about, do I sound like that? God help me.

I urge you to ponder this koan, which could lead you to satori.

: Zubon

Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence

Guild Wars 2 has vistas and jumping puzzles as Explorer content. And then, because zone design is hard, Guild Wars 2 has invisible walls. There are places where you can sprint up 60+ degree cliffs and places where you cannot reach despite seeing your character jump high enough to get to next platform. “I’ll just hop up this gentle slope. Or I can slide down the cliff and start over, that’s fun too.”

: Zubon