Author: Zubon

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Lessons Unlearned

One of the resolutions I fail to keep is to stop answering questions.

“Does X do Y?”
Yes.
“I don’t think it does.”

Asking a question seeking confirmation is not useful if you are going to ignore dis-confirmation. This goes for matters of fact or opinion. (I still have a place in my heart for people asking what is the best looking armor. Yes, let’s establish that objectively, this will be productive.) I have, at least, stopped arguing with them, or really with much of anyone. Once I have said my piece, and you have contradicted it, my re-contradicting you will not add anything. You are free to think I’m an idiot for disagreeing with you, and I am free to think you’re an idiot for asking a question when you have already decided which answer to accept.

: Zubon

The last sentence does not apply to your professors.

[BL2] Badass Rank

Borderlands 2 uses the usual achievements, but it has its own in-game achievement system in the form of challenges. Challenges award you 1-100 points of “badass rank.” Increasing your badass rank awards you badass tokens. Badass tokens can be redeemed for a diminishing bonus to a stat such as accuracy or gun damage. Badass rank and its bonuses are account-based, but challenges are character-based. If you play the game again, you may notice it to be marginally easier with +5% to everything, but then you thousands of badass rank to approach “+5% to everything.”

Pretty much everything you do contributes to several challenges, with the note that “everything you do” almost invariably involves shooting people in the face. One shot could potentially add a tick to getting criticals with submachine guns, killing enemies with submachine guns, killing enemies with criticals from submachine guns, getting a second wind with submachine guns, getting a second wind from killing badass enemies, killing midgets, dealing corrosive damage, and maybe a few more. That lucky bullet, of course, would need to be from a corrosive submachine gun, killing a badass midget while downed. There are also exploration, loot, and boss challenges, and the inevitable meta-challenge.

The math becomes interesting at times. Few enemies survive multiple headshots from a good sniper rifle, so you will probably complete kills with sniper rifle criticals before you complete sniper rifle criticals (which demands higher numbers), unlike other weapons. As Zer0, kills while using his special ability come slowly because you get one attack per special ability use, while the Mechromancer can hit F and go AFK while psychos die. Level does not matter, so you could round out your challenges by going back to a lower-level area and picking off enemies that cannot hurt you. Of course, that is putting in a lot of effort to get a few points that will eventually contribute to 0.5% bonus, but you are MMO players who grind fiercely for best-in-slot. Also, I accidentally earned quite a few points by putting on a spike shield (thorns aura) and walking through a spiderant nest (tiny enemies that pounce on you). It is enormously satisfying to watch the tiny, annoying enemies immolate themselves for having the audacity to threaten you.

Also, when you complete a challenge as the Mechromancer, she sometimes exclaims, “The completionist in me is like, ‘YEEAAAH!'”

: Zubon

[BL2] Morally Ambivalent

Moral ambiguity is a given in Borderlands 2. Vault Hunters come to Pandora to kill people and take their stuff while massacring the local wildlife. They will kill anyone for anyone with an exclamation point … which is pretty much every adventurer, even if they have good reason not to. This is acceptable because (1) you don’t care and (2) the people you’re shooting in the face are even worse, and Handsome Jack calls you constantly to remind you of this.

“Morally ambivalent” comes from characters occasionally stopping to wonder whether they are bad people and should they care about it. Claptrap gives you the first one of those for a few seconds early on. When [spoiler] has a cult in her honor, she spends the entire quest line vacillating about the acceptability of it, flipping between “flattered” and “creeped out,” and saying, “I am a bad person.”

The setting is insufficiently serious to have moral substance. Your archenemy calls you up to talk about Butt Stallion, the horse he named in your honor. It’s dead baby humor all the way down. Zer0 is taking this himself way too seriously. The Mechromancer, however, seems more in tune with the setting, shooting people in the face while shouting, “n00b!”

: Zubon

[GW2] Dev Posts on New Vision: WoW Loot Progression with LotRO Radiance

You can tell it’s not a grind or a treadmill because they say it’s not. Also this “add a new tier of gear” thing is totally not something they plan to do every three months. Only every time they add an expansion pack worth of content.

: Zubon

You’ll be facing WvW opponents who will get the top gear, so let’s add DAoC problems, too. Trifecta! If the horizontal endgame isn’t working as planned, why not pivot to a vertical endgame?

[GW2] Unrealized Aspirations

The horizontal endgame of Guild Wars 2 does not seem to be working as well as intended. Players are using all eight dungeons, but this is not working at all in the open world. The high-level loot is too concentrated in Orr to encourage level 80s to hang out in lower level zones, so non-bot 80s visit the dragons, the dungeons, and Orr. Lost Shores will add an option to that list but not encourage using the 0-70 content. You can find action in the newbie zones, and channeling players together still works pretty well, but most of the world seems very sparsely populated even in prime time (outside the holiday event). The dynamic event model has fewer problems with low density than Warhammer Online, but you group events can sit there for hours, and the same for events not labeled as group content but effectively unsoloable. I am amongst the many people who talked about how you could play in any zone at level 80, so all these good things will come of that, but the reward structure is not supporting that. There are some people who play the content they enjoy without thought of the rewards; they are mostly not MMO players.

You still run into dynamic events that are bugged from launch, and with the less frequent server resets, those can also sit there for a very long time. This lets a lot of players see them, which furthers negativity. If an event can reach a bugged state from which it cannot advance, it will eventually get there, so over time more areas reach bugged states that cannot be cleared. Logging on Sunday morning for my 5 daily events, 2 of the first 4 I found were bugged, along with a waypoint stuck in a bugged contested state from a previous event. This is an uncommon run of luck, but I was not exactly surprised. I am still judging games based on how long you can play until you see a bug, and GW2 is not doing enormously well there.

: Zubon

If they fix the problem from my first paragraph, come back here a month later to hear me complain about how level 80s are swarming newbie events because the problems with scaling let you kill much faster at lower levels.

[BL2] Stupidity Is the Only Option

Borderlands 2 is very fond of sending you into obvious traps. I keep running into sidequests where you are clearly going to be betrayed, to the point where the quest text makes sarcastic comments about it. The main storyline requires you to take orders from someone while she is betraying you. It goes beyond stupid to suicidal.

Also under the heading of traps, playing a sniper character is increasingly unsatisfying as fewer and fewer areas spawn the enemies before you are in aggro range. Maybe this will reverse at some point, but all the bandits are in their huts, the skags are in the holes, and the rakk are over the horizon until red dots appear on your screen. Robots fly in from orbit and enemies burrow up literally beneath your feet. If I could blast those huts with my rocket launcher, that would change things, but the enemies just don’t exist until they are within pistol range. I need to play multiplayer and send someone else in as bait first. I’m sure the enemies will spawn into that obvious trap.

: Zubon

Changes and Learning

Frequent changes make evaluation difficult.

Going through Guild Wars 2 a second and third time, I am finding it easier. I do not know how much of that is familiarity with the particular content, better knowledge of game mechanics, more experience with a class, playing a different class, having better equipment, or changes to the game itself. Those game changes could also be subdivided into changes to the content, game mechanics, or classes. Those could be further subdivided into bug fixes, intentional adjustments/rebalancing, and unintended effects of other changes. In group content, multiply all these by your number of players.

I know that some early complaints, mine included, came down to whining that the game got hard at the end. Orr and the dungeons differ, with a difficulty curve like Psychonauts (not, blessedly, Psychonauts at release). The same tactics that thrive in Plains of Ashford events will get you killed walking to a cypress sapling in the Straits of Devastation. I am confident that Orr is easier due to learning, but I do not know if the other factors are more important.

Underwater content, for example, is still ugly on my elementalist. I have gotten better at it, but the class is just lousy in the water. My ranger has few problems, with higher DPS when I hit 1 and AFK than my elementalist sees using all 20 skills. My guardian is at least as effective underwater as on land; spear’s 2 is just ridiculous. I am confident that the difficulty of underwater content varies with class, but there are other factors also in play.

These examples are from Guild Wars 2, but I did not use the [GW2] tag because this happens with all games that rebalance, particularly when they update frequently. Sometimes I feel really awesome on patch day, only to discover that some mobs were nerfed. Sometimes I return to an old game and think I have forgotten how to play, only to discover that “how to play” changed while I was not looking.

: Zubon

Interaction Options

Assassin’s Creed 3 lets you pet dogs. Asheron’s Call lets you tip cows (and even added a quest for it). Guild Wars 2 uses some animal and NPC interactions for its hearts, such as feeding cows or watering crops.

Every now and again, it’s nice to have options other than “kill them,” you know? You may not spend much time tipping cows or petting dogs, but just knowing the option is there makes the game a bit less of a murder simulator.

: Zubon

Every time I see the abbreviation for Assassin’s Creed 3, I think, “They’re making Asheron’s Call 3?!?!!”

[GW2] 8 = 33

Presentation affects perception affects enjoyment.

Guild Wars has 8 dungeon options. I have run them all. I am pretty much out of things to do rather than re-do, and do I really want to grind a dungeon 19 times to get an armor set?

Guild Wars has 33 dungeon options. Every dungeon has story mode plus three exploration paths (four in Arah). I have run 15 of those 33. I am less than half-way through. Most of the endgame lies before me, and having run all 8 story modes, it is all immediately accessible.

How you count matters. If you think of the three explorations as the same dungeon, doing all three in a night is a groan-worthy grind. If you think of the them as different dungeons, doing all three in a night is quite a varied experience. Some dungeons will lend themselves more and less to either interpretation; some have a choice of paths before you see the first enemy, while others have significant overlap.

The November monthly achievement set includes “run 5 dungeons.” Some forum-goers are up in arms about this. Do they really believe that of 33 dungeon options, they cannot find 1 or 2 worth running weekly? ArenaNet is batting 0 for 33? They more likely see 8 dungeons, all of which will have at least 1 problem on at least 1 path, so all the dungeons are borked. How you count matters.

: Zubon

I understand the angry soloers, but hey, you lose that argument. MMOs will have some achievements that encourage and reward group play. It’s kind of a thing, you know?