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Changing His Solo Ways

For some reason, this 2006 post appeared in my RSS feed. But of course, the writings of Wilhelm Arcturus are always fresh and ready to be mined for new insights. Such as:

I have not avoided groups in the past because I am anti-social. … I have avoided groups because they make leveling take longer in WoW. Solo play, for levels, is rewarded in WoW. When you group, your exp per kill is reduced, time taken to finish drop related quests goes up dramatically with each person you add to the group (so you do kill more, which mitigates the exp per kill loss somewhat, but a lot of the exp is in finishing the quest, so your exp/hour is still taking a hit), and unless your group all has the same quests, somebody is usually waiting for everybody else to get to their quest.

This of course brought 2008 to mind:

If it is designed as solo content, you gain little to nothing for bringing a friend. Indeed, it might take the two of you longer to do it together than it would to do it separately, say if you each need to loot a dozen ground objects that despawn after they are looted; you would have been better off each going alone, five minutes after each other, rather than going together and waiting for the respawns.

Both of which reinforce the point from yesterday that grouping brings with it the potential for great upsides and downsides. If most of the leveling game takes away most of the upside, that leaves a lot of distance for the increasingly common “solo MMO” to fall.

Which are perhaps some reasons why we are seeing the rise of MOBAs and a renaissance in small group games where you bring your friends rather than trying to seek the questionable benefits of a matchmaker service.

: Zubon

Human Risks

Single-player gaming lacks the peaks that you get in good multiplayer gaming. It also lacks the troughs in bad multiplayer gaming. Your gaming preferences are going to be strongly influenced by how much weight you place on the most extreme experience versus the average experience and your relative weight of positive versus negative experiences.

If one really horrible thing can ruin your entire night, PvP will almost inevitably be a harrowing experience for you, and any multiplayer gaming is a crapshoot. Beyond just the effects of anonymity, wide exposure teaches you that some people are just genuinely horrible human beings. And they want to share that with you.

If you are the sort to laugh it off or counter-troll, the downside of PvP and multiplayer gaming is limited for you. If you seek conflict rather than avoiding it, the internet will always have more for you. If you remember the positive and forget the negative, the downside is temporary while the upside is lasting.

If you evaluate the quality of the evening by how many minutes you were having a good time, something like EVE Online will rarely be a good night for you. Scouting, mining, traveling… the median minute of play is pretty dull. Granted, the average minute of MMO play is poor relative to most other niches, but PvP gaming with lengthy downtime stands out as low average quality. If you evaluate the quality of the evening by the best minute in which you were having a good time, nothing is going to top PvP and multiplayer. If you place more weight on extreme rather than average experiences, even strongly negative events can be rated highly because you take the ebb with the flow.

A related factor is the context in which you will tolerate all this. You might tolerate perverse randomization but rage against human maliciousness. You might laugh off human stupidity but rage against poor design. You might tolerate poor design as long as the company is good. Introverts will have an extra weight against negative multiplayer interactions, because those are excessively psychologically taxing.

: Zubon

[GW2] Progressing Wuv

Mrs. Ravious has been smitten with the idea of getting the legendary weapon, Kudzu. She’s only been playing her first MMO ever for a few months, and already she’s a huge fan of Dulfy, has notes all over her desk on resource nodes and “best places to…”, and she has a hand drawn spreadsheet for her legendary. I married the right woman. Still, it’s going to be a hard, long road for us casual hardcore players.

The best chunk of getting a legendary is the Gift of Mastery. This is where players just play the game as intended. Gain levels, explore the word, play events, and kill lesser players in World vs. World (WvW). The other three chunks are basically just grinding, money, and luck. So Mrs. Ravious and I have decided to largely focus on WvW for summer. Continue reading [GW2] Progressing Wuv

500 / 23 = ~22

I have argued before that seeing a game’s achievements tells you a bit about how the developers expect you to play and therefore whether you are likely to enjoy their game design. Even without explicit categories, you can see that a game awards achievements for beating the game, for 100% completion, for beating bosses with one hand tied behind your back, for exploring all the corners of the game, for killing 10 million rats, etc. It says something about the game or the developers if there are hundreds of achievements or they skew towards one category.

In Prime World: Defenders, 46/80 achievements are for defeating each of 23 maps with one of two hands tied behind your back; you will get some of them on accident, others take some relatively precise work like beating them with exactly 1 life left.
Two of the achievements I had not through are power of 10 achievements. If you scroll down to the least achieved achievements, you see “build 10,000 towers” and “win 500 games.” Does this game expect you to grind and reward you for it? Look at the math in the title. A game with 23 maps has an achievement for winning 500 games. Even with procedurally generated content, that is a LOT of times per map.

: Zubon

[LoL] Toxicity Case Study

We had a request for League of Legends Tribunal highlights, and SynCaine linked to a guildmate’s post. I clicked a few “warning” punishments from my case history, and this one stood out.

You can view Tribunal records even if you are not a logged-in LoL player, but just in case this link does not work for you, let me give you a transcript of what the reported player said in the first game. The below transcript, plus being reported 14 more times in 4 other games, will get you a warning. The language used is likely inappropriate for workplace reading, but then you are already at an online gaming blog.
Continue reading [LoL] Toxicity Case Study

[LoL] Leaving

I am back to having 4v5 games 50% of the time in League of Legends, so I am giving it up for at least a few months. It is a roaring mix of people who never connect to the game, miss the first 5-10 minutes, AFK after one tower goes town, intentionally feed, wait at base for 200 gold, or (to take my last example) have their mothers tell them to come eat dinner 20 minutes into a game.

Whatever system discourages leaving games has no visible impact. It is tolerant, because technical problems happen. You need to accumulate some number of offenses before action will be considered, and then punishment is possible, and then it may rise as high as a temporary ban. I presume some number of time bans will eventually lead to a permaban, but my short Tribunal history shows no permabans for that, as opposed to cursing at people. In a F2P game, you can have as many accounts as you like, so the main penalty is that you need to log back on and have less IP. Basically, you can do whatever you want, and you have no skin in the game; the sort of person who might get permabanned on a level 30 account would love the chance to start a new account and smurf/troll the newer players.

I have mainly been playing ARAM because the average toxicity seems lower. The attendant lack of concern for playing the game (“eh, it’s just ARAM”) is rather upsetting. I presume I could have fewer of these people if I played high ELO ranked games on Summoner’s Rift, but I don’t feel willing to wade up the stream of toxin to get there. Also, I am far from a platinum player, so I am worried the game would suggest that I park for a few months midstream.

: Zubon

[LoL] Efficient Communication

League of Legends has a simple vocabulary for praise and abuse. “That” before something means “is very good or inherently overpowered.” “This” before something means “is very bad or inherently useless.” You’re in the middle of a game and don’t have time to type a lot of invective, but the most important thing in the world is making sure other people know you are better than them at online games, so you can quickly insult your teammates with “this cait” to make sure everyone knows that your team is only losing because Caitlyn is not performing up to your expectations. Make sure to put it in all chat so the other team can share your scorn for your teammates. Alternately, if “this cait” is on the other team, this will let them know that their team is bad and they should feel bad. Because that is the kind of community the game still supports, even after things have improved.

This also technically gets around using profanity and verbal abuse, although Tribunal reviewers (and most other players) will recognize that people who use a lot of “this cait” will also throw out streams of profanity and racial slurs.

“that cait” is usually reserved for opponents, rather than praising teammates, again to emphasize that losing is not your fault. Ashe, of course, gets it more frequently on either team because of the meme.

: Zubon

[GW2] Dragon Ball Hints and Tips

I found it very interesting as I was mind-drafting this post to find that Jeromai had already covered just about everything I had to say about Dragon Ball. It’s a good read, and I want to reiterate some of the points to both players and ArenaNet.

Hints to Players

Your First Team Will Suck – Jeromai goes in to considerable detail on why, but consider it a warmup and also a reason not to quit matches to find a different pool of players. Your first team will suck there too.

Jump Pads Don’t Dodge – as awesome a mobility feature as the jump pads are, they will not stop a dragonball from hitting you. I love chasing players down the chutes and kill them as they jump upwards.

Corners and Pillars Do – taking tight turns down the chutes and using the pillars on the top level are some of the best ways to make sure that an opponent’s dragonball is obstructed.

Know Your Health Escapes – in a firefight knowing when to dodge, fall, jump in to a health pickup will make you win.

Don’t Be Chased – my favorite kills are when players try and run away from me down the chutes. I am just getting free shots at your backside. If you have to run away, at least use your other skills. You can throw #2 behind you, for example.

Duos Are Best, Threes a Crowd – I find that sticking with one other player is best. You can take down solo opponents with ease, and not hangup on one another.

Hints to ArenaNet

Rewards Commensurate with Skill – good PvP is hard on the player. Make it justly rewarding. Right now the rewards for mindlessly chasing down holograms are a magnitude greater than a Dragon Ball match. Giving rewards to top players on both sides will keep the losing side playing.

Random Arenas Need Randomness – I don’t understand why there is a switch team function to being with. The only reason to switch to a team is if that team is winning, and those people are not the ones that are going to leave the match. There should also be a wider pool of players to shake up matches a bit more too, but that might be a server limitation.

Personal Achievements Triumphant – 20 wins is edging on too many for an achievement, and it is weighed down by the reliance on a decent team. Having that replaced with personal kills, for example, would have decreased the reliance on an oft-horrible team and given more reasons to stick around.

–Ravious

[GW2] Smashing, Bashing

The newest Guild Wars 2 festival is upon us. The Dragon Bash Festival is a couple week event centered mostly around Lion’s Arch and surrounding areas. It is beautiful, fun, and tiring all at once. There are some fantastic moments and rough edges as is likely to be expected in an MMO where new content is flying down from on high every two weeks.

The highest point of the festival is the art. Jeromai has a nice post with a lot of screenshots showing off the beauty of Lion’s Arch in dragon festival form. Bhagpuss also decided to post on the festival in screenshot form, albeit in a more comical sense. It is amazing, and I’ve stood around for many minutes just watching the holographic dragon. It’s so much to take in I keep finding neat little things all over the place even if it is just a placement of a dragon target or a new sign. If you haven’t signed in to Guild Wars 2 in awhile, I would say that updating and logging in just to walk around Lion’s Arch is worth it. Continue reading [GW2] Smashing, Bashing

Quote Mine

Eric at Elder Game is just winning all over the place in a post that covers a variety of balance topics. Two sample quotes:

I haven’t played much in years, but as far as I can tell, post Cataclysm, [WoW’s] balancing plan has been to say “fuck solo balance, we’ll just make it insanely easy for all the classes, and then nobody will care enough to complain.” Which… is a valid approach for certain audiences. [Like me! -Sandra]

…

One of my rules of thumb is that an MMO shouldn’t balance gameplay via tedium. By that, I mean a designer shouldn’t say “Well you could become overpowered by doing X, but you’d have to do X for 500 hours, and who’s going to do that?” MMO players, that’s who. Because of the competitive environment, a lot of them will do whatever it takes, and they’ll curse your name for “making” them do it, all at the same time.

He goes on to explain how playing fetch will be used as a balance technique.

The second quote was an explicit part of balancing the original Magic: The Gathering. The developers balanced the game assuming a relatively small card environment. “This card is powerful, but it is rare, so that won’t be a problem unless people start buying thousands of cards. In which case, our game is a huge success, so no problem.”

: Zubon