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Scaling Content

I played through most of the Borderlands DLC this weekend. Most of it scales to level. This is both really great and really awful.

It is really great to have everything as endgame content. There is always tension in development between working on the leveling game and the endgame, and scaling content lets you create one dungeon that is available at many level ranges. Success! Are you really going to buy DLC that adds level 20 action for a game where your character is level 50? This isn’t an MMO where you are likely to have a stable of alts.

It is really awful in that it highlights the problems inherent in the game. If you stopped playing Borderlands because it felt like you just kept fighting the same guys over and over again, making them level along with you so that everything is an at-level encounter really drives home that you have yet another edition of the same guys, this time with a new number by the name. You don’t even get the MMO scheme of making this goblin blue with a flaming sword; you are still fighting exactly the same bandits and psychos, sometimes with a different name but exactly the same model and abilities. When you get new enemies, the zone structure will make you repeat many fights unless you complete the whole thing in one setting, and the fight is exactly the same because the enemies leveled along with you (or it might have gotten harder if you did not find better equipment, so you are fighting the same fight only you are relatively weaker). It’s great that you can have a Playthrough 2 where everything is even-con to make it a potentially meaningful challenge, but it really drives home that you put levels in a FPS where they add so little that you built mechanics to get around having levels in your FPS.

: Zubon

At this point, I’m open to the argument that “do the same thing 10 times a day for as long as you’re willing to subscribe” is the point of the current MMO genre rather than a defect in it.

[GW2] Big Government Guilds

That buzz word in the title should get some attention. Regardless of your stance, good reader, on federalism and what any U.S. founders believed, the premise of “big government” is control. It’s this issue of control, or perceived lack of control, with the hinted Guild Wars 2 guild system that has the community in a tizzy.

The Guild Wars 2 guild system lets players join multiple guilds through their account and characters. My asura warrior, Guvvernator, might be in some main guild, an asura-only role-playing guild, a 6-man real-life friends guild, and a casual PvP guild. The full details of the guild system are missing, but I suspect that since I can rack up influence for my guilds, I would likely have to choose one guild as my “main,” which would receive the benefits of my activities. The others would be exclusive chat rooms with whatever other guild features ArenaNet is planning, hopefully like a guild bank. Continue reading [GW2] Big Government Guilds

Overthinking

We have several commenters on the last post citing the problem as “overthinking”: optimization is sort of prisoners’ dilemma, in which optimization (defection) takes the fun out of the game, but if you don’t optimize (cooperate), you’ll be excluded from some significant portion of the game/community. By this logic, everyone would be happier playing with each other and not worrying about optimization, but once someone brings a gun to the knife fight, you have to too. There is a tension here.

On the one hand, I am very much on the record as being against games that use big numbers on monsters instead of an interesting challenge. You only need optimized characters if the encounter is tuned to need optimized characters, and this optimization usually involves lots of grinding and hey this kind of thing is why I am on MMO hiatus. One part of the tension is whether the game itself actually calls for optimization, or at least accessing some significant portion of the content does, at which point non-optimizers are self-excluding by that decision. They are not playing the same game as everyone else, and if they complain about not being invited to groups that would wipe because they are there, well, it’s a DPS check boss, bring the DPS or stay home.

On the other hand, I am very much with the view of playing with friends for fun. That’s kind of why we’re here, or should be, because “achievement” in the MMO sense is mostly a false sense of achievement. At that point, though, what game you’re playing is mostly irrelevant as long as it does not get in the way of fun, which most MMOs do with level differences and several other things, so you would be much happier playing something else with your friends. If the fun is playing with your friends, and you are bringing the friends, the game itself is not carrying much of the weight here. It’s just an excuse to be in a chat room together.

On the gripping hand, there is non-optimization and then there is just being lousy. You don’t need hardcore theorycraft to see that some people are just really bad at really easy games, going beyond “I don’t care about optimization” to “I don’t care.” The tank who won’t use a shield, the guy who is using gear from 20 levels ago, the folks who like to see big numbers and why are you whining about group mechanics: there are degrees of sub-optimal, and once you’re on that slope, internet arguments will typically deliver you into the hands of people who show up to raid without any potions. As a reasonable human, you can probably strike a balance, but get 5 or more random humans on the internet, and how likely are you to strike a reasonable mean between “you must have this gearscore to come” and “complaining about the naked tank is just rude.” (I’ve played with people who never trained the best abilities for their classes because it went against their “character concepts,” which is fine if you warn people at the start that you are intentionally sub-optimal.) You and your friends may have a reasonable mean within your group, but then we are back to your bringing your own friends and so why would it matter what anyone else thinks if you are not going to be grouping with them?

: Zubon

Ethic, I can still get annoyed remembering the */Radiation Controller who joined us on the Sewer Trial and mocked the notion that she should have taken any of the Radiation toggles. I was checking builds and ready to boot people for a month after that.

Choices

Tobold asks about choices in games. Come on back after reading it, because I substantially agree and just want to extend on the last paragraph, because the optimal solution cited is rather difficult. Of course, I think we should be more demanding of our games, so that’s not a problem for me in particular, except for the disappointment.

Set aside the two easy cases first: one choice is clearly better than the other (once you know the consequences or do enough math), or neither choice has any meaningful consequences. If you want to argue that there is still a meaningful “choice” to be had there, you can argue the point back at Tobold’s.

The goal is “different but equal.” Choice A gives you 10 armor and choice B gives you +30 to attack rats. Tobold cites Sid Meier, while my favorite quote on the subject comes from a fellow posting under the name Tempest Stormwind: “Taste the indecision? That’s balance, right there.” That is the goal, to have a non-trivial choice where you could go either way. Let’s add some complications to that. Continue reading Choices

Tech and Talent Trees

One sort of “RPG elements” that never felt like a grind was the StarCraft 2 armory. This gave a real sense of progress in that you upgraded a building and it stayed upgraded. Contrarily, you still needed to go through upgrading your vehicles every mission at the armory building. I get that the campaign armory and research were effectively talent trees, but it felt like there really was some continuity and meaningful advancement as a part of the campaign, rather than just starting over with a Command Center and a few SCVs every time. Because sometimes you get tired of learning Bronze Working every game of Civ.

I thought Age of Empires Online was doing that, but it turns out that you are unlocking the ability to train Wheelbarrows every time you play rather than simply learning Wheelbarrows. There are some permanent upgrades down at the bottom of the tech tree.

: Zubon

Peaceful Expansion

I have an irrational affinity for claiming land on the map. Civilization IV and V expand your empire’s borders through culture, somewhat like Zerg creep except that it just keeps going. Civ V took away the dueling culture aspect, whereby empire borders would fluctuate as one culture overpowered another on a tile. This makes the Great Artist’s culture bomb much less impressive, although more permanent; it also takes away the immensely satisfying culture conquest of cities, whereby cities in other nations riot and defect because you are just that awesome.

Expanding your cultural borders is an effective defense. The further away enemy units must stay without either your permission or a declaration of war, the more time you have to marshal your defenses when that war happens. It also lets you claim some nice tiles beyond your cities’ borders, because whether or not you can use them, you do not want anyone else to have them. You can also block major travel routes so that those not in your favor must go decades out of their way.

I’m sure this is some primal mammalian urge, the digital equivalent of peeing on trees to mark your territory. It is still enormously gratifying to see the entire continent in your color while the numbers on the meters at the top of the screen keep going up.

: Zubon

[GW2] Unshackling Guilds

As I’ve said before, with the mind crush of information coming out of PAX for Guild Wars 2 I have to focus on one feature with laser-like intensity for my sanity and ability to communicerfuffle*error*. Anyway, possibly one of the first features most players think about for Guild Wars 2 is the guilds themselves. We aren’t doing a guildless war, people!

Elixabeth, Bringer-of-Sunshine, finishes up her thoughts on day 2 at PAX, where significant news of guilds in Guild Wars 2 was released. There’s some cool stuff like gaining “influence” for a guild by doing activities, which seems to be getting more standard in MMOs, such as Rift. Guilds will be able to capture, hold, and upgrade keeps in the world v. world PvP combat zone, which again is pretty standard for an MMO with that persistent PvP zonage. I would say that these are pretty good additions, but the best news is how each player and that player’s character joins guilds. Continue reading [GW2] Unshackling Guilds

Age of Empires Online

It’s Age of Empires, with fewer civilizations and you need to both pay $20 and level grind to get full access each civilization. That is for each civilization, not $20 for the game. I can see where this business model would be great for Microsoft except for the “why would you pay for this rather than just buying an RTS?” part. They may have missed the “micro” bit of “microtransactions” with a $20 starting price point.

They are swinging for the home run, though, coming out of the gate with a $100 “season one pass.” They dream big, and MMOs are not the only ones asking you to drop multiples of a box cost for the promise of future content development.

Playing a little further, I met my first item that was no-drop, no-sell, “premium civilization” only. (Storage space is also strictly limited under F2P.) I think my exit point was meeting the Hetairoi, which are basically battering ram cavalry you can access with a “premium civilization.” I think the intent is “look at how awesome the paying customers’ toys are,” but the affect is “pay to win.”

: Zubon

Time Value

Item shops have done us the great service of asking, “How little do you value your time?” Putting a dollar value on what you are grinding for establishes that yes, you really are willing to do something you don’t especially enjoy for a reward worth a few cents per hour.

I mentioned League of Legends referrals lately. For each person who gets to level 5, you receive a 4-game IP boost (cost $2.23, although given the exchange between RP and IP, the value is about $1.00, so I assume people tend not to but those), and at 10 referrals, you get a free champion ($7.50). So a referral is worth about $1, maybe $2 if you can get 10 of them. You should put more effort into getting a free taco. Ah, but here is where it gets fun: people make multiple accounts and refer themselves to get the free champion. How long does it take to get to level 5? Not too long, I’m sure, and playing a few rounds of very low level LoL might even be fun, but people are going through that effort for the equivalent of $2.

See also: entering contests and drawings, where you can computer what fraction of a cent your expected value is. If you drive somewhere to pick up your lottery numbers, the gas you burned was probably worth more than the expected value of the ticket.

: Zubon

Item shops also helpfully raise the question of why you are paying to play a game where, given the option, you might pay to avoid playing (parts of?) the game.

Connectivity

League of Legends faces the same problem that many team-based online games have: other human beings. You are playing 5 vs. 5, and what are the odds that you can get 10 random internet people together without at least one feeding (intentionally or not), trolling, griefing, leaving… at least cheating, hacking, and glitch-exploiting have not been problems I have run into, despite their prevalence in other games. Even if everyone were trying, I don’t know how well the system does with balancing teams. The mix of newb and pro on each team often leads to some kind of balance in the aggregate, but then you have the apocalyptically awful as well as smurfs.

My rage of the day is simply getting a 5 vs 5 game going. Of my last 6 games, 1 had no disconnects. (Connectivity seems to be a commonly observed problem.) Some of those were against bots, so we had 4 vs 5 despite only have five possible points of failure. Even the bots are pretty rough in a 4 vs 5 fight.

: Zubon