Monthly Archives: February 2013

More EA Kerfuffle

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A while back I had mentioned that I was voting with my wallet and no longer buying anymore EA games.  SWTOR and Mass Effect destroyed BioWare, PopCap hasn’t had a single release since being purchased and Origin still makes me feel dirty.

Dead Space 3 is the most recent example of money grabbing, where you had micro (or macro really) transactions in game to help you create better gear.   And a few days ago they said that they were going to focus even more on this type of business model for all future games.

Now, I’ve seen arguments that these “quality of life” features are just that, innocuous unless you want to boost past something and from some companies, I would agree.  Guild Wars 2 follows this path and does a decent job.  So does Path of Exile and Star Trek Online.  Games that don’t?  Everquest, LOTRO and every EA game that has an online store.  And I think this comes down to a basic design problem.

Games that are designed from the bottom up to have an online store tend to have a better ability to control the items in the store.  The core systems are designed around a consistent vision.  Games that convert either mid-design or post launch have very little chance to have unobtrusive stores and mechanics.  The game simply never accounted for it in the first place.  Clearly there are exceptions to this rule as Zynga has never made an acceptable store and DCUO has made a pretty solid conversion.

I’m not saying that EA is the devil of all games.  I am saying that their business practices (and those of Activision) are such that they are hollowing out the gaming population’s wallets and patience.  I am not ignorant that they will make millions on another CoD or Battlefield but hopefully the lesson with Medal of Honor, SWTOR and BLOPS2 can have them focus more on making quality games rather than finding a new way to nickel and dime.

Playstation, whatsamajigger

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Pardon the lack of posts lately, work is taking an incredible toll on everything – including sleep.  It was bad enough that I completely forgot that Sony was announcing the PS4 and I didn’t get a chance to read up on it until this weekend.

Disclaimer here, I have a Wii, XBOX 360 and a PS3.  I played a fair amount of the first with friends but haven’t really touched it in nearly 2 years.  The second was my go-to console for a few years if only because of price and some mods I had put on the box.  I only picked up a PS3 a couple years back (since the launch price was astronomically stupid) and that was driven primarily for the Blu-Ray drive price point. The games lately have all been pretty good, especially the exclusives.  My quibbles with the console though are the following.

1)      You can only run 1 thing at a time and that one thing isn’t voice chat unless it’s part of the game

2)      Every week has some sort of update that takes 5 minutes and provides no noticeable effect

3)      Every game takes 10-45 minutes on first load due to the install

4)      The controllers have no changeable batteries, meaning a 2 year old controller has half the life of a brand new one.  Irksome.

5)      No effective way to chat type (keyboard)

6)      No non-proprietary remote control for movies

What I like about the PS3 includes:

1)      Netflix and its UI.  I just find it works better here than the Wii or XBOX 360.

2)      Blu-Ray player.  I’m thinking this is the reason that Blu-Rays are so common now.

3)      The Dashboard is clean and includes everything you want.  And it loads quickly.

4)      The games are better.  This is subjective but what’s the last XBOX exclusive you played other than Halo?

5)      Free multiplayer.

I should also include the fact that I have a gaming notebook PC.  The thing is a beast, I paid a pretty penny for it and I have dozens of games on Steam that I can play through HDMI and a controller.

So the PS4 announcement certainly had me taking note.  From what I can read about it, it’s essentially a computer with a custom operating system.  Cloud-based gaming, check.  Download games to play, check.  Integrates with Steam library, seems to be a check.  Ports and doo-dads, check. Games, sort of check though the list went from 58 to 23 this week.  More powerful than my laptop, nope.

And that’s the kicker isn’t it.  It seems as if Sony is going to launch a service rather than an actual console.  I’m ok with that, really I am.  I am concerned as to how they expect to bill us for it.  Microsoft makes a lot of money with XBOX live, though they are the only ones making money in a F2P world.  If Sony launches earlier and provides great games and no fee for multiplayer, I see a massive advantage for Sony.  If they can solve the cloud gaming issues (lag, day 1 launch load, etc…) I think we’re in for one heck of a fun ride.  The only downside I see with it, and this applies to all consoles, is that I take up the TV when I want to play.  This is not good for the wife.  Find a workaround to this, and I’m sure you’ll sell billions.

Risky Business

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I have a quick story to tell about PvP and item loss.  Back in the day, Ultima Online had open world, free for all PvP.  When you died, no matter how you died, anyone could loot your corpse clean.  If you died to a bear, another player could loot you and they would take a reputation hit.  If they had killed you, then they already had the hit.  Take too much of a hit and you turned red and people could kill you without worry.  Most PvPers had a main character for PvP and then alts that were “clean”.

My characters had houses.    Before the Trammel split, you needed a key to open the door and you needed that key to be on you.  Most players had multiple bags, in bags and hid their keys deep down.  That way, when someone tried to loot you, they had to find the key.  My crafter character (mining, lumberjack, smith, tinker and more) had no ability to fight.  He did have the ability to create and sell items from the house.  One day, out cutting lumber he was killed and lost the key to the house.  With that key, the PvPer took ownership of the house, then sold it on eBay.  I remember quitting that day.

When I did get back, again before the Trammel split but after the housing updates to no longer worry about keys, when I did get killed I lost time.  Since items degraded on use, and a super weapon was perhaps 25% stronger than a regular one, the difference wasn’t huge.  That part didn’t bug me as much.   The game had items that provided a boost but not such a boost that items were prized over all else.

I don’t mind PvP and item loss, if the item loss is reasonable.  I consider reasonable as a measure of time to get back to what would be competitive, not to where I was.  Losing a house and vendors, I would have to work for weeks to get back anything close to the competitiveness I had.  Losing a set of weapons and regeants, I’d be out 30 minutes.  I like having some risk involved with PvP.  I don’t like forced risk with no options to mitigate it.  I mean, imagine if EvE didn’t have clones.  You think people would still be playing today? 

PvP without risk is pretty boring as you can’t really invest into it.  Planetside 2 has no risk but plenty of benefits (which is why there are so many aimbots).  WoW PvP is even worse, with no link at all between PvP and the rest of the game.  I do have my fingers crossed that Camelot Unchained it able to find the right balance between PvP with risk (therefore investment) and not causing people to quit with rage.

Future of Gaming

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Free to Play always leaves a dirty taste in my mouth.  My first experiences with the genre were when Facebook games like FarmVille starting popping up all over the place.  Extremely aggressive monetization schemes push me away – like a used car salesman I guess.  Some games have done pretty well by it, like DDO, where the proper game is solid and you buy more content for the game as you progress.  I like the concept of a free trial and buying modules; that makes sense.  What I don’t like is a game like TOR where you are given the entire game for free then nickel and dimed to get access to content not ever actually owning the content.  Mind you, reports are pretty strong that lockboxes are keeping the game afloat since nearly every single update to the store includes a new lockbox package.

I am assuming I’m not alone in this distaste as the F2P genre is in the middle of a rather significant upheaval at the moment.  Zynga is all but dead, iOS/Android apps have monetization barriers, Cryptic is taking a new business model, TSW is seemingly on its last legs and Planetside 2 is suffering from fairly massive player drops.

Take this with some salt but I see it a lot like the days of DAOC, EQ and UO, where choice was the prime determinant for games.  You like PvE?  EQ.  You like PvP?  DAOC.  You like sandboxes?  UO.  You like a mix of them?  Too bad.  F2P has such a glut of gaming choices today that no sane person is going to play your crappy game and give you money when the next game over gives a much better experience for the same cost.  If you like goblins that jump on pogo sticks and wave chickens, there are bound to be 2-3 games that can offer it.

Path of Exile

A prime example of this new paradigm is Path of Exile.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, the game provides an extremely full and rich quality experience.  There are plenty of F2P action RPGs either out or coming out, but I can’t think of a single one that provides the depth and customization that PoE gives for free.  Think of your typical loot based game where you have crappy loot and great loot.  PoE gives you the ability to upgrade the worst loot in the game to be better than anything that can drop, if you roll the dice properly.  Since the game is barter-based, there are no gold sellers.  Micro-transactions are all convenience based since you can’t outright buy power due to the fore mentioned gear customization.  One of the smartest moves they’ve done is to target a niche and under promise and over deliver on their product.

I can see this as the future of F2P, heck online gaming as a whole.  Scope your target audience, budget accordingly, get the core requirements and systems down pat, communicate it with the audience and then deliver a bug-free, polished experience.  There’s just no way today that a new IP can come out of the gate and expect to sell millions of copies in the first week or month.  Target small, reach it, and then slowly build out.

My Concerns with EvE

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While I think that EvE is a good benchmark for PvP sandbox games, I have the underlying impression that it’s painting itself into a corner.  To be noted, I feel the same way about WoW, though MoP was quite a break from the mess of Cataclysm.

If you follow EvE you likely follow Jester’s blog.   Prolific blogger is only the tip of the iceberg.  Of interest is a recent post on the current state of the game at the macro and micro levels.  A long but educating read for sure.

The thing about WoW is that while the game still caters to hardcore raiders, over the years, the game has expanded to attract more player styles.  The devs are the ones holding the real controls of the game as the cart can only follow the rails with a themepark.  If you don’t like the game, you have one throat to choke.

EvE on the other hand is a different beast, where the devs are only able to provide tools and modest controls.  While CCP might want the game to go in a certain direction, they cannot force null-sec to change unless they bring massive changes to the game structure -at great risk of pushing long time gamers out completely.  For a game that presents itself as a PvP game, there’s remarkably little of it outside of ganking – with the odd large battles occurring from time to time.  In fact, the massive battle a few weeks back was looked upon with derision since it essentially happened by accident and was fought over nothing.

EvE is at a point where the game isn’t about spaceships and moons and travel.  It’s about backdoor deals, scams, trades, alliances and stalemates.  It’s like there are two completely different games in EvE.  The starter experience is the complete opposite of the latter end.  And you can’t even bother entering the 2nd part of the game if you aren’t willing to make ridiculous sacrifices along the road.  And the joke is that CCP has stated multiple times that the people in high-sec are funding the null-sec playstyle, essentially the sheep are funding the wolves.

My concern isn’t with the game today, it’s with the direction of the game today.  Null-sec is moving towards larger, slower alliances with no middle or small alliances.  New players are put into a spot of eternal ganking or subservience to the large alliances to see anything outside of high-sec.  There’s no middle ground left.  The worst part isn’t that CCP is ignoring this – they are not – it’s that the people with the real control, the low-sec alliances, don’t see a problem in the first place.

Nostalgic Future

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Let’s talk a bit about nostalgia and the impact of looking forward, which seems to be all the rage with Mark Jacobs’ Camelot Unchained announcement.  I know I’ve touched on this topic a few times now but it seems like it needs a new look given the blog-o-sphere’s penchant for “old” games.  Just quick side-note here – I find it hilarious that Keen is playing a pirated version of UO, hosted by a 3rd party, playing for free and then complaining that the rule set is not one he agrees with.

Here’s my premise for nostalgia and its impact.  A game will grow so long as its core demographic gameplay elements remain stable.  EvE has grown because at the core, it’s been relatively the same experience with a few tweaks (albeit some major) to the game as a whole.  Anytime there was massive change, a significant drop happened.  WoW has grown over the years and cycled out its demographic at multiple points along development. 

This is an important distinction.  I do not know a single gamer that has not played WoW at some point.  I know of very few that have ever played EvE.  Of those players, the amount that have played EvE and still do are high while those that have played WoW and still do is quite low.  This is due to WoW being multiple games over the years (group-centric, quest centric, challenge centric, casual centric, story centric, etc…)

When someone comes along and says “X was the best game ever” they are pointing to a place in time where a single game appealed to their core needs.  DAoC was the “best ever RvRvR” because it was the ONLY one for a long time.  UO was the best PvP sandbox for the same reason.  When Trammel came, the core mechanics of the game changed and people moved on.

If you’re a game developer, make damn sure you have a target audience in mind and that you build for that audience.  Make sure your decisions are with that group in mind.  TOR’s failure is that the core demographic is clearly in players making alts and re-running the levelling content but was marketed towards the general MMO population.  DCUO is a perfect example of targeting the console crowd yet marketing to the PC.

Camelot Unchained will succeed if Mark Jacobs is able to target a specific demographic (admittedly small, say 50K) and cater to those needs without bleeding in the financial aspect of “moar playerz”.  This is the same concern I have for Firefall which seems to completely revamp its systems on a quarterly basis.  The same concern I had with D3 when it redid all skills 6 months before launch after 7 years in development.  And finally, it’s the main reason I have my doubts about Wildstar trying to appeal to everyone and succeeding.

Causation without Causality

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You know how they say people go to the internet to find people they agree with?  I always try to find some dissenting voices – if those voices can clearly communicate.  Tobold, Keen (not Graev, since I agree with him 99% of the time) and Syncaine tend to do the best job that I’ve seen so far.  Just to be clear, I don’t always disagree with them, just more often than not.  I would say that the common thread for all three is that they are incredibly nostalgic and unlikely to take change well.  Plus they are much more meta about gaming than I am.  I also think that’s why they get so many people posting on their topics, since they tend to take a very different approach than most.

Take Syncaine’s post about the problems of depth.  Read through the comments a bit to find that while the concept of the post is sound, the arguments used within are less so.  If Syncaine is the target demographic for PvP and has 3 accounts, is that the baseline we should assume?  PvP doesn’t run the economy as ISK needs to come from somewhere – and that is PvE.  Sort of how in WoW nearly all money in the system is now generated from  Daily Quests.  EvE is a success story in marketing and development for being able to keep so many people active.  It is not a success story to show that a new game today should have the same amount of depth.   If EvE were to launch today as it did back in the day, it would fail.  Not a question.  Others have tried with the same model, minus the community, and have all failed.  Worse than the PvE ones.

Game succeed and fail for dozens of reasons in terms of gameplay but they all fail because they don’t have enough money to keep the doors open.  No matter how good your game is, no matter how deep it is, you need people to play it.  People who are willing to invest in a game, PvE or PvP or Sandbox combination, are invested in their current game.  There aren’t 500K people out there who are willing to subscribe to a game long term because they are already subscribed to another game out there.  Developers need to aim smaller, much smaller and build from that point.

Gold Spam is Gone

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One of the things I think everyone on the planet has a distaste for is gold seller spam in games.  Some games it’s absolutely ridiculous how pervasive it can be.  WoW used to be really bad until gold became next to useless in Cataclysm since everyone could get thousands a day with next to no effort.  Any game with a monetary system that actually makes sense is going to be spammed.  Read into those last 2 sentences a bit…Games that are Free to Play to start are the worst offenders (see TOR lately, or LOTRO).

Anyhow, when I look at action RPGs like Diablo and Torchlight the same problem occurs to differing degrees.  D2’s set stat system had trade chat spam but it was out of game.  D3’s auction house, I’ve covered on dozens of occasions now, but remains to say that it’s one of the largest gaming failures I have ever seen from a player perspective and not from a developer’s perspective.  Torchlight’s randomness and upgrade system makes trading impractical on the long.  Gear is important but character builds more so.

Then comes Path of Exile.  Action RPG in the same vein as D2 and Torchlight.  Stat based, tons of gear and walls of trade.  But no 3rd party spam.  Why?  Because there’s no money.  Every single trade is bartered with PCs and NPCs.  Want that sword?  2 orbs of transmute.  Axe?  Maybe two scrolls and an armorsmith piece.  I am curious as to how this works out in the end but the best part is that any spam in game is from other players.  And that’s the type of spam I actually WANT to pay attention to.  Not having to filter out gold spam is such a nice thing, I didn’t realize how bad it was in other games until now.