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Matchmaking is Hard

At SynCaine’s suggestion, I have been playing Boom Beach. Because most of the guild started playing about the same time, most of us hit the same wall at the same point: the PvP system in the game discourages playing. It is a variant on the problem seen with Marvel Puzzle Quest.

PvP opponents are matched via “victory points.” Victory points are acquired by clearing NPC bases and by successfully attacking in PvP; victory points are lost by being unsuccessfully defending in PvP and for having uncleared NPC or PvP bases on your map. You get more bases on your map (to clear or leave uncleared) by expanding your map. PvP is used to raid other bases for resources; one successful attack, and you clear the base off your map and take some resources. Sometimes clearing an NPC base will award an extra victory point.

Your goal in gaming the system would be to be the highest level player at your victory point level. I intentionally avoided expanding my map for a while to avoid the temptation to clear more enemy bases. For a little while, I was clearing every base and advancing quickly, which is to say I was flying face-first at a wall that matched me against a PvP base 17 levels higher than me. Clearing bases is good for getting small amounts of resources, but when you start getting raided five times per day, your resource situation becomes a bit more perilous. Of course, if everyone games the system, we are back to the same problem just with fewer resources in play.

So for the past week or two, most of the Boom Beach guild has been slowing down. Leave NPC bases on your map when they pop up, avoid PvP, fail at PvP defense and watch your victory point total get knocked back down to “reasonable opponents” level. The daily reward includes an incentive to have more victory points and you want stronger opponents because they’ll have more resources, but the gain per victory point seems small and stronger opponents are only good if they are strong but not stronger than you.

And now back to gaming matchmaking systems in F2P games. It is legitimately difficult to design a good matchmaking system, particularly in an environment with free (and large scale) entry and exit.

: Zubon

Card City Nights

Card City Nights is frequently entertaining but I am not sure I would go so far as “good.” It is an interesting take on collectible card games with simple mechanics and an emphasis on strategic placement of cards. The difficulty is “trivially easy” until the beyond-Psychonauts difficulty spike for the end of the game. I played the PC version, which is an unusually good iWhatever port, a technical gem amidst the many sloppy ports.
Continue reading Card City Nights

[GW2] Desert Borderlands

At Rezzed, the game convention of London, ArenaNet just had a presentation (recorded Twitch link) regarding the Desert Borderlands map. This new map will replace the current Borderlands maps, and then some kind of schedule / rotation will be determined. In usual form the Dulfy Corp provides an excellent swath of notes on the very informative presentation.

There are three “corners” to the map: earth, fire, and wind. Each with a corresponding keep. It seems like in usual form the keep is the golden prize for each of the three teams, but the Desert Borderlands seems to more strongly emphasize that the Keep is resting on a pyramid of support.  Continue reading [GW2] Desert Borderlands

[GW2] Press Demo Feedbacks and Overviews

A lot of press, ‘casters, and a few other media-types were invited to ArenaNet last week to check out a demo of the Heart of Thorns content. Just about everything they played was already revealed through ArenaNet’s Twitch channel, including the Revenant (up to two legends), a slice of the new map, the Verdant Brink, the wyvern boss battle, and the new PvP gamemode Stronghold.

The best aggregate by far is RandomUser’s well maintained megapost on the event at Reddit. There were a few surprises, for me. I didn’t know, for example, that Rock, Paper, Shotgun would attend. They always feel a bit flighty or uncontrollable for press events.  Continue reading [GW2] Press Demo Feedbacks and Overviews

CRGE – Roleplaying Without a GM

I’ve finally released CRGE! It’s a complete, concise system for playing roleplaying games without a GM. CRGE has been worked on for well over two years. Possibly three or four, but I didn’t put true pen to paper until just over two. I have refined it as best I could. Polished it until my eyes bled, and playtested the heck out of it.

It’s tiered as a system, which is a design I am immensely proud of because I’ve found that solo roleplayers are immense tinkerers. For my playstyle I have built what I feel is my personal suite of tools for what I feel is a darn good roleplaying experience.

Back to the tiers. The first tier is a “yes or no” question answerer. Very simple in concept, but my idea was to keep pushing for the unexpected. For example, you could ask “is someone standing outside my window watching me?” and get an answer “No, but…” someone is definitely watching you. Or you could get “Yes, and unexpectedly…” the scene changes. It’s all about shaking things up, the way I feel a GM would.

The second tier is focused on making scenes and story threads mean something. It ties back to getting unexpected answers. So, you might learn that the next scene something big is going to resolved. It won’t be apparent until you land on that, but things are always being pushed towards meaning and resolution. Almost like a system built around Chekhov’s gun.

Finally, I try and put this all together in to a framework where you can play a concise story. I was always frustrated at my early attempts at solo roleplaying because I felt I was meandering in a sandbox. Things became too complex and too realistic (in that Sisyphean-type way). I wanted a story with resolution and meaning. I wanted to play in chapters, not endless tangents. Hopefully I conveyed a way to bring it all together.

Anyway, if you are like “how could this possibly work?”, download it for free, and there is a complete example in the appendices. If you like what you see feel free to leave feedback or throw a tip my way.

–Ravious

[GW2] Reasons to Slow Level my Revenant

I got chided the other day in Guild Wars 2 for using my skill point scrolls in lieu of the upcoming expansion, with new Revenant profession. When used they provide this flashy whirlwind-boom, which lets everybody know I gained a skill point. I politely asked if I should start, “yet another stack of skill points”. The response was a cat-face, my most hated emote ( :3), which makes no sense to me on any level. I could not punch through the internet. Continue reading [GW2] Reasons to Slow Level my Revenant

Crowfall Interview on the Business Model

I contacted ArtCraft Entertainment – who is currently running a Kickstarter for the upcoming Crowfall MMO – to see if they would want to briefly discuss their choice of business model and a few followups. In the midst of the craziness they were more than willing to answer a couple questions.

Crowfall is a “buy once, play forever” game. What made you want to go against the MMO majority of subscription or free-to-play?

It was the right business model for this game and this audience.  There is a lot of fatigue with free-to-play that are actually ‘pay-to-win’ in disguise.  And we were sensitive to the portion of our audience that can’t easily afford a subscription so we made that optional, rather than required.  This allows players with more time than money to be just as competitive as players with more money than time, putting everyone on as even a playing field as possible. Continue reading Crowfall Interview on the Business Model

[GW2] Revenant Reminiscing

The revenant profession coming with the Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns seems like the biggest throwback yet to Guild Wars 1. It operates so differently from any other profession that I would definitely call it an expansion profession. For a really nice overview of the new profession check out GuildMag’s post on it.

The biggest reason I am excited about the revenant is the flavor. While necromancer was my main in Guild Wars 1, the ritualist was my favorite character. The whole power dependent on otherworldly spirits was quite flavorful. The revenant seems no different in channeling legends as power conduits. Even more awesome, the devs have said that the legend will actually speak to the character.

I am also interested in the style of heavy class that revenant represents. Obviously, we don’t have a complete picture having only examples of two weapon sets and two legends.

Jalis seems very guardian-ish. It’s a different and welcome flavor of guardian, but it definitely feels like a similar piece of the pie. Thankfully the corresponding weapon, the hammer feels way different from anything guardian-ish.

I am more interested in Mallyx, which feels completely different from anything on the table. The closest cousin is necromancer, but Mallyx seems to want to turn the revenant into a condition battery, a patient zero, rather than necromancer’s condition reversal.

The devs have said that each legend is going to be a package, and they kept referring to the weapons (and trait lines) as aligning with certain legends. It was pretty clear that mace seemed to line up with Mallyx for condition fun, but hammer seemed a bit broader than just being a Jalis weapon. My feeling is that like weapon set swapping, players will have a primary legend in mind when building and then a secondary legend. I’ve seen lots of talk about the revenant possibly being a great use for the celestial armor set (+x to all stats).

Out of the soldier profession, I am not a fan of the warrior, which has always felt a bit too direct for me. I like the guardian pretty much, but I much prefer the debuff/control side of things, which is why out of spite, the necromancer is my current main. Honestly, the revenant might replace the necromancer, I am not sure. The revenant – the unselfish tank-y necromancer, heh. I will definitely be booting one up with the Heart of Thorns expansion regardless.

–Ravious

[TT] Kayak Chaos

Kayak Chaos is a card and board game about racing down a river. The river unfolds over the course of play as kayaks reach the next segment. Cards let you move down or across the river or alter its course. A mix of strategy and randomization that seemed subject to a runaway leader effect, also with risks of kingmaker scenarios and piling on early leaders.

Gameplay is simple: play 3 of your 5 cards. Cards can provide movement, alter the river, or block altering the river (rarer). Movement is obviously valuable for getting ahead. Altering the river can make your course easier or impede your rivals. For example, you could shift the river over one space, which re-positions rocks or makes someone need to swerve to avoid the river bank, or you could flip a segment of the river to turn someone around. You can even switch two segments or river, pulling back a rival, leapfrogging ahead, or both.

Each of several boards is a short stretch of the river. Boards are revealed as a player gets past the current stretch of river, with that player picking how the new stretch is placed (from four options). This is the source of the runaway leader effect: once you are in the lead, you get free chances to arrange the rest of the board to your advantage. Of course, everyone gets those cards to rearrange the board, so if someone decides to slow you down rather than advancing themselves, an early leader might be severely punished and thrown back; my first game was a three-player game, so using your scarce turns to slow an opponent means not advancing yourself, and the third player clearly comes out ahead in that scenario. Perhaps this works out better with two or four players? With two, you capture all the benefits of slowing your opponent; with four, you can spread the costs. That dynamic is also the source of the kingmaker scenario, where a player left behind with no chance of winning can focus on making life easier or harder for other players.

Playing (or discarding) 3 of 5 cards in your hand each round means that there will be some interesting decisions but that luck drives a lot of the game. It seems somewhere around the balance between my demand for strategic play and others’ love of randomization, but it is also subject to swings like when I received one forward movement card out of ten cards, while at other times I could sweep through multiple boards in a turn due to favorable randomization. It might also fall into a middle that makes no one happy; I would need more games played to tell.

Basic rules are simple, but there are some complexities and interactions so this might be at the edge of what a casual player is willing to learn for a quick kayaking game. Also not quite as quick if a lot of people spend effort slowing down the leader, but game length can be customized by playing with a shorter river. Enjoyable with surprising depth for a game that looks so simple, but not so deep that a new player is lost or even notices much depth.

: Zubon

Crowfall, Before 5 Days

The timer on the Crowfall website is edged through the 5 days mark as I write this. A lot of people, including myself, believe it to be the launch of their Kickstarter campaign. The founders write that they want to make the game beholden to their customers instead of a worldwide publisher. It is so refreshing when it feels like the devs are talking to me.

I am excited about this game. I’ve wanted a fantasy EVE-ish MMO since I realized I just couldn’t get in to EVE. So here is a little primer so you aren’t blind-sided in 5 days with an inundation of information.

Translated Elevator Pitch

(This I gleamed from their website, forums, and any other source I could find.)

It’s buy-2-play, or buy-the-box, or a conventional video game in point-of-sale.

It’s PvP and economy based, with looting fallen players’ goods and item destruction being part of the economy. Some PvE as well, but not the focus.

Class, race, and role are smashed together into an “archetype”. A Legionnaire will be a centaur focusing on melee DPS.

It’s instanced-ish. There are worlds to fight over, and the worlds have endings.

Where I Expound: Worlds and PvP Economy Continue reading Crowfall, Before 5 Days