Category: General

General

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Blast from the Past: Tome of Knowledge and Sets

I am still waiting for games to pick up this idea from 2009. Achievement systems have proliferated, tracking all kinds of things, but most games want to give you cosmetic items instead of unlocks. One specific item in that last post has been addressed by many games: a mount tab instead of making you carry mounts around. City of Heroes has always rewarded players by unlocking costume pieces, and Borderlands 2 lets you find/win/buy customization options.

With the upswing in F2P, however, life moves in the opposite direction. Storage space and cosmetic customization are ways they make money, so of course they charge you per item per change in appearance.

: Zubon

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.

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?!?!!”

Quote of the Week: Togetherness

When you play with a set group, much of the ‘content’ is experiencing the stuff together, so even bugs or grind can become a source of amusement because you have 10 people in vent bitching about it and laughing rather than just you smashing your head into it solo.
— SynCaine

This is something I address frequently, but from another direction. If you the player are supplying most of the ‘content,’ it does not matter what the game is. We just need something as an excuse to do it together. I, as the customer, tend to demand that the game keep up its end of this transaction by contributing something, sometimes anything to the process. It is dumb to pay a monthly fee to a company that is not comparing favorably with playing Hearts. Many games contribute negatively, making it harder to play with your friends. Don’t pay for that.

Just because you had a good time does not mean that it was good. “So bad it’s good” is still bad. The items SynCaine cites are still bugs and bad grind, even if you can find a way to enjoy them. It would be objectively better to have good content to share and discuss, rather than simply “misery loves company.”

Our guild has a lovely time gathering for the 30-second cut scene reveal, but the event did not add much beyond creating a Schelling point. We created the content by being there, but we can/have done that nightly be declaring guild events. We had a guild event the night before: the Mad King’s Clock Tower. Many of us had a good time talking, groaning, sharing advice, shouting about norn and charr, adjusting graphics settings, etc. We all got the achievement. We appreciated the art, and we recognized which aspects were not conducive to a good experience.

I am not looking for products and experiences where I get out of it what I put into it. I can get that anywhere. The things I really value give me back more than I put it. Demand more.

: Zubon

Estimating Difficulty

When A Tale in the Desert introduced barley as a growable crop, they also added a technology that could be unlocked by donating 100,000 barley to a university. How did they get the number 100,000? Nekhmet (one of the developers) grew a bunch of barley, they figured that the players would learn more efficient techniques (ATitD uses player skill-based crafting), and then they multiplied to get a large but not ridiculous number of hours of work. It turned out that Nekhmet was a prodigy at growing barley, at that technology was unavailable for months until ad hoc additions to the game allowed barley output to double and triple.

When Guild Wars 2 introduced pumpkin carving, a few hundred pumpkins were hidden around the world. It was an exploration achievement: find 150 to unlock the title. A technological problem let the same pumpkins respawn after carving, and they spawned on a per-character basis for a per-account achievement, so you could get the title without leaving Lion’s Arch.

When The Lord of the Rings Online introduced Mines of Moria, the dungeon fights that were its endgame were a mass of bugs and exploits, some of which were obviously unintended (stand in a doorway while a door closes: your weapons are on one side, your body is on the other, and the boss cannot hit you) while others surprised the players when they were declared “unintended” (kite the boss around his throne so that it is between the two of you when he uses his devastating area effect attack).

When City of Heroes introduced the Hamidon raid, players found a variety of ways to beat it, ranging from sniping it from beyond its range to capitalizing on teleportation and invulnerability to avoid damage. For months, every technique used was patched away as an unintended exploit. Some developers claimed that there was an intended way to beat Hamidon, but the players never seemed to find the “intended” one, and it is not clear whether it would have actually worked. Hamidon was later reconfigured into a fight with a more obvious “intended” approach.

Guild Wars 2 has a pop-up warning when you start the cooking crafting skill, telling you that it is more expensive in terms of time, silver, and karma than the other trade skills. Cooking is the fastest, cheapest, easiest craft to take to 400 skill, notably having the last points available for a few hundred karma worth of peaches where other skills require dozens of drops or even globs of ectoplasm.

Can you cite a dozen examples from your gaming history where “hard” content was trivial while “easy” content was literally impossible at release? Can you see why I am suspicious of any player claims about how hard something is supposed to be, what the developers’ intent was, or who this is for?

: Zubon

Quote of the Week: Leeky Dragons

It is very typical of the GW2 experience that you might run off to pick vegetables in the middle of a boss fight.
— Spinks

I know the spawn she is talking about, and I frequently pick those leeks during the Claw of Jormag fight. You can also see a dozen players pause between dragon crystals to mine the rich mithril vein. Everyone who did not stop mined it during the last dragon pre-event.

: Zubon

Revamping

A game you play (or played) is about to (or just did) have a major update/expansion. There will be an overhaul of core systems and/or your main class. Is your reaction:

  • “Awesome, let’s see all my new toys!” or
  • “Oh Lord, I have to learn how to play all over again?”?

Congratulations, you now have a decision criterion for whether you should spend that money. Please run through this exercise before you resubscribe, rather than having that reaction while you stare at a row of skill icons.

: Zubon