Author Archives: Asmiroth

System Complexity

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Sometimes complexity is a good thing, sometimes it isn’t.  WoW has had issues with this concept since launch, though the recent expansion has really focused more on the increase of this concern.

When the game initially launched, the variable DPS loads were less based on gear and more on rotation. Certainly raid gear helped but resistances got you through.  Rotations were key and a lot of classes simply sat out entire raids because they were non competitive.  The rotations themselves were fairly simple too, 3-4 buttons.

Add on a few expansions and we get to Lich King with some additional mechanics (hit/armor penetration, expertise) and the distribution moved onto gear rather than actual rotations.  Hunters topped DPS charts not because of their rotations (though it helped) but because they stacked armor penetration to absurd amounts.  Most classes were at a 6 button rotation, heck even paladins had a meme about it.  This was a simple time.

Cataclysm removed armor penetration and implemented Mastery – a stat with differing effects, per class and spec.  Rogues either increased poison damage, increases off-hand attacks or increased finishing move damage.  Some were better than others, some were completely ignored.  Skill bloat, more talents, more stats brought out optimal rotations not only based on talent choices but on gear levels.  At specific levels of mastery or crit, you changed your rotation for some classes.  Some specs were optimal in area effect fights, some were mobile, some were burst.  A single class might need to swap between them on each boss.

This added layer of complexity is confusing at first and frustrating later on.  If I say you have 5 things to remember in a fight and they are all DPS related, how do you manage to move out of the fire, turn around, attack the adds and press the clicky too?  This is why the Looking For Raid tool was so effective, it brought down the bar for DPS requirements to a point where people could press 1-2 buttons and get through content.  You could do 50% less damage than you would in a heroic raid and succeed.  Swap to the heroic raid though and each attack was required.  Drop 5% from optimal and you were nearly assured a wipe.

I won’t argue for or against complex/simple systems – each has their place.  What I will argue against is using both systems on the same target audience.  Shamans have it fairly easy with 3 things to remember. Good players and bad ones tend to group near the same DPS numbers.  Warlocks (as in the link) have 12-15 things to remember.  This means that there is a huge difference between the bad ones and the good ones.  This variance makes the class less attractive on the whole and specifically less attractive if the best played are still sub-optimal.  If I have to press 10 buttons to do X DPS and a mage only has to press 5 and does more DPS than I do, why am I playing a warlock in the first place?  Taking it a step further, if a hybrid class can heal and DPS at the same level as I can, why play a DPS only class?

It must be quite the challenge from the design point of view.  You need to put in the right amount of complexity to make a class attractive (not boring), competitive (+/- 5%) yet not so overly complex that you need to practice 8 hours a day to come close to optimal.

Mists of Pandaria is taking an interesting approach of providing more diversity between classes – essentially expanding the issue while trying to simplify it.  Warlocks are being practically re-written.  Monks will heal by punching people in the face.  If you’re only optimal while attacking, what happens when you can’t attack (a Rogue issue for years)?  When do you say “the line is here, we will not cross it?”

Classic RPGs

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I’ve been reading quite a lot about nostalgia in regards to older RPG games.  The thing about nostalgia is that it’s quite often seen with rose colored glasses.  See any recent MMO launch being compared to WoW at launch for a great example.

Still, there is something to be said about older games.  XCOM is still one of the best games (if not the best) I have ever played and I played it again a couple years ago with the same dread turning corners.  FF6 (or 3 here) is my absolute favorite Final Fantasy.  I played that for hundreds of hours over the years.  Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana are right next to it, with the former on my DS and iPhone.  Look at today’s RPGs though and most are forgettable.  In an age where MMOs rule the RPG market, the single player versions feel like they need to sell games to everyone, when they actually disappoint everyone.

Dragon Age: Origins,  Bioware’s first 3D foray into the D&D realm, was met with great reviews, a lot of sales and happy fans.  Sure, there were pacing issues but on the whole, the system worked rather well.  Dragon Age 2, taking a more action-oriented approach, alienated critics and fans and sold poorly (compared to the first).  It was a dumbed down approach, rushed out the gate and made to appeal to a wider audience.  Which it didn’t.

FFXII was a drastic break from X.  It was practically an MMO in terms of mechanics and that threw a lot of people off.  It was a dance rather than a strategy.  FFXIII was a joke of “press A to win” with pure MMO roles.  The days of everyone attacking, using the proper abilities at the right time seem to be gone.  Either you’re a tank (literally taunting the enemy), a healer or some other niche role.  There’s no strategy there, the game is cake.

When I look back to the classics very few western games make the cut.  Ultima is one, though only the middle of the pack.  It was less about numbers and more about choices, which in the end, is exactly what an RPG should be about.  Fallout is another one, where the balance between combat and dialogue was perfect.  Baldur’s Gate is another example but that’s 100% D&D, not a true IP.

Japanese games though, wow.  Grinding comes out of that country but something happened during the 90s to smooth the curve.    If I compare The Dark Spire’s encounter rate (1/5 steps) and the need to grind to move on next to Chrono Cross’ open-ended, easy play style there’s a huge difference.  Then again, the Dark Spire (or Dragon Quest I guess) is less about the story and more about the fights.  The Chrono series has always had a great balance between what’s happening outside and inside of combat.  Pacing of it all just seems to make the experience enjoyable.  Your choices matter.  You had a vested interest in your characters, who all had multiple dimensions of depth.

If you’ve played FF6, try and explain Terra’s character and progression.  Then, compare that to Lightning in FF13.  Heck, Robo in Chrono Trigger has more exposition than Balthier in FF12 – all without voice overs or cutscenes.

Today’s RPGs are RPGs in title only.  In the end, there’s not much difference between the latest Batman game and World of Warcraft – mechanically.  You learn a dance, repeat that dance, win the game.  Except Batman has a decent story, defined success criteria and a reward for completing something other than yet another mountain to climb.

There’s something to be said for the simple mechanics of older games.  I didn’t need a 30 second cutscene to show me how powerful my characters were.  Beating a boss 6 times your size, just scraping by, learning a new methods of combat was super rewarding.  If I was to play only that I can see how I would get bored at some point, which explains the MMO fatigue to a degree.

The classics are classics for a reason – they are good if not great games.  They make you want to come back time and again.  The things they have in common are magic and when you find it, you remember it and cherish it.  Maybe we have to go through more rocks today to find those diamonds but when we do, boy does it put a smile on my face.

Ranked PvP

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So patch 1.2 for SWTOR is around the corner and one of the much bally-hooed features is being removed at the last minute (the patch is today, the message yesterday) – ranked PvP.  This is the ability of the game to group players based on their rank (PvP level) and therefore let fresh (level 0) 50s have a chance against level 60 (in PvP terms) 50s.

The cool thing SWTOR did for PvP from 1-49 is that the playing field is fairly even.  Everyone has the same HP, power levels are the same, weapons are adjusted to be pretty close, same with armor.  Basically, the only real difference between a level 8 in PvP and a level 45 is the amount of skills available.  It’s not uncommon for a level 12 Bounty Hunter to go on a rampage.

What SWTOR does poorly (and I admit all PvE games do this) is include a PvP stat that increases your damage done, damage absorbed and healing done/taken.  By 15%, per stat. To get that gear, you need to be max level in PvP and have enough tokens to buy it.  Which you should easily have from the amount of time it took to get there.  The difference is that on an even playing field, you have a ~50% chance of winning, which grants higher PvP experience.  When you start putting fresh 50s in a zone with “old” 50s, you get washes.  I’ve seen 3 people try to kill a single player (who was not getting healed) and all of them died.  This isn’t a performance issue, this is a stat issue.

WoW and Rift both allow ranked PvP but they also allow cross-server PvP, which SWTOR doesn’t.  I’m guessing that’s the true hurdle here – which is also why there’s still no LFG tool.  Interestingly, TERA announced this week they will have an LFG tool, making SWTOR the only subscription based PvE MMO on the market without that feature.

Oh, and 1.2 is 6 weeks late.  Here’s hoping the legacy stuff they put in keeps players in their seats.

Oldschool is Newschool

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It’s no secret I love RPGs.  There’s just something about the numbers and the randomness that’s attractive.  Plus, the instant save/reload to try that damn enemy once more and beat that RNG!

I think the oldschool aspect – not seeing your character, the 4 directions of movement, pure numbers, hard difficulty – really simplifies the RPG down to it’s basics.  Dark Spire scratched my itch a few years back on the DS and that was truly a D&D RPG with all the limits you’d expect.  Nice and portable, brutally hard, complicated mechanics.  I loved every minute of the pain.

Legend of Grimrock  is a PC game that came out today and though it isn’t as hardcore in terms of lack of detail it makes up in oodles of atmosphere.  You can hear that spider crawling around you but you can’t see it.  Checking every wall for a secret nook.  Avoiding the rampaging troll at the last second.   There’s no town and no vendor.  Just you and the never ending floors.  A neat take on magic is that you need to select glyphs to cast a spell but you need to learn the spell first from a scroll.  It slows down magic casting a bit but since magic ALWAYS hits, its a pretty powerful thing to manage.

There are only fighters, mages and rogues and you’re set in a 2×2 formation, with the front 2 taking all attacks until one dies.  You have 4 races, with humans the jack of all trades, minotaurs the tanks/beefs, lizardmen as the rogues and insectoids as mages.  You get 4 skill points per level and get to invest into one of 6 linear skill trees (with a cap of 50 per).  Spend enough points, unlock new stats, benefits, resists or abilities.  There’s a certain amount of planning needed for each role, which is a blast.

Traps, hidden switches, teleports – fun stuff to make the levels different.  Even though the levels look familiar, there’s always something to push you forward.  A minor goal of unlocking a door or solving a puzzle splits the zone into smaller pockets, making it a series of adventures rather than a slosh through endless enemies.

It’s too bad more companies don’t do something as simple and effective as Grimrock.  I’m getting tired of the action adventure/rpg mishmash, with just a drop of RPG.  The basics can be hardcore, oldschool but still a lot of fun.  More please!

Little Late to the Party

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My bad, should have found this a while ago.

Quite an effective piece that tries to convey the Mass Effect story issues by comparing it to Lord of the Rings.

Simply put, the failure of the ending of Mass Effect is so absurdly large, that all the hard work and amazing gameplay preceding it is shunned.  It would be like eating the best apple pie ever made, only to find a worm in your last bite.

What If?

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Long weekend = relaxing = reading.

After having it come up during a conversation last week, I decided to pick up The Chrysalids and The Day of the Triffids, both by John Wyndham.  Easy enough reads but rather chocked full of ideas.

Both focus around society’s attitudes after a cataclysmic event and both have interesting narrative points of view.  It really was the age of Golden Science Fiction and truth be told, I’m incredibly drawn by the ideas.  The whole concept of that era is the “What If?” line of thought and seeing how today’s society (at the time) would fit into it.

Today’s sci-fi is pretty trashy and more focused on the technology than the characters.  At least from the few that I’ve read.  The sense of awe and exponential growth is lost on today’s authors and instead we get Dan Brown’s getting all the media attention.

Still, the whole what if idea really gets you thinking.  What if we are all islands in a massive ocean, disconnected by the sea but connected through the land underneath?  What if we all share different facets of the same unconscious world in our dreams? What if we are more than the total amount of our cells?  What if our “souls” have connections?  How do we explain the repeatable paranormal, our empathic links with close friends?

It sounds religious, and truly I think this is where religion should focus itself, but the idea that we are, as a whole, united in growth is refreshing.  It’s like the human individual potential has been fully tapped and the next step (which we are in mid-stride) is the social potential – the ability for many minds to accomplish a common goal.  A step further would have us be able to do that without a proxy, simply by nature.  Who knows…

Health and Nutrition

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Flip side to gaming today!  I’ve had ups and downs with weight and health.  It took me a while to figure out what types of foods made me sick and I’ve done my best to eliminate them from my diet.  When I cheat (like chips or cheese) I can feel the effects pretty quickly.  But that’s me!  Everyone has their own tolerances.

The above picture is the typical food pyramid.  I would be willing to bet 100$ that the majority of the western world does not follow it.  Many skip out the fruits and vegetables, stack up on sugar/filler and eat too much meat/dairy.  People then get freaked out about their size and start some crazy diet where they cut out entire sections or focus on a particular one to absurdity.  Everyone is different and there really isn’t a single 100% recipe that works for everyone.  Best you can have are guidelines.

A friend and his wife are taking on a 1 year paleo diet challenge and blogging about it.  As a concept, the idea is that you eat what our ancestors 10,000 years ago ate.  Grass fed animal meats, fish, wild plants.  Hunter-gatherer stuff.  The diet itself isn’t so much controversial as it is unknown and inapplicable in today’s environment.

Grass-fed animal meat?  That’s near impossible to find in the western world, where everything is grain fed.  You’d need to know a farmer.  Heck, the entire western world is run on grain, has been since the industrial revolution.  I won’t even go into the chemicals they put on everything.

Still though, there are some larger issues when we talk about this diet.

  1. We have no idea what proportions our ancestors ate in their meals, nor are we direct descendants from their stock.  I have european ancestors but my friends have asian, native, african and so on, as their background.  They had different diets.
  2. Though studies show they didn’t suffer from diseases such as cardiovascular, osteoporosis or diabetes, they also didn’t live long enough to get them.  The average life expectancy was ~30.  How many 25 year olds do you know who have had heart attacks?
  3. Compared to today’s values, their diets were low in salt (half), high in potassium (3x higher), low in Calcium (half), high fibre (8x higher), high vitamins (though low Vitamin D).  Those first 3 have a direct impact on chronic diseases that affect older people, which paleo people simply didn’t live long enough to reach.
  4. Casein (or dairy products) and gluten (wheat products) were not introduced until we moved from hunter gatherer to agricultural/settler societies.  Of note, life expectancy increases dramatically at this point – for various reasons.

As the blog I linked to shows, they are not following a true paleo diet.  Here’s an example of their recent Fish Tacos.  Items that are bolded are not permitted in the “true” diet.

  • Olive oil
  • Ancho Chilli Powder
  • Lime
  • Cumin
  • Wild caught fish (we used sole)
  • Avocado or cococut oil
  • Iceberg or romaine lettuce

Here’s another example.

  • 3 breakfast egg muffins (p.222 of the book Paleo Comfort foods by Julie and Charles Mayfield)
  • 1 banana with 2 tbsp almond butter
  • raw carrots
  • 3 portobello mushroom cap burgers with garlic, tomatoes, onions and lettuce (~7 ounces of beef in total)
  • Sweet potato fries and zuchini
  • 2 scoops of Egg Protein in 500 ml water
  • 4 ounces of salmon (wet rub: fresh dill, dijon mustard, and old fashioned mustard)
  • 3 ounces of ribs
  • Mixed green salad with herbs dressing and avocado
  • Spaghetti Squash Pesto to satiety (P.212 from the Paleo Confort Foods by Julie and Charles Mayfield)

This isn’t to squash their idea to eat healthier, it’s to show that they are using the wrong words to show their healthier choices.  This isn’t a paleo diet – it’s a diet free of casein (dairy) and gluten (wheat) and legumes (beans).  I’ll talk about those first 2 in a different post, they are quite interesting.

Personally, I know that I cannot eat anything with preservatives – namely potassium nitrates.  I can’t eat anything that’s been fried, or any saturated fats – my wife can attest to this!  I have trouble digesting casein (all dairy products).  I’ve cut down on the amount of gluten I consume (minus beer) simply because of the lack of nutritional value.  But that’s me.  You have to find your own path.

Player Investment

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There’s a bit of debate these past few months about what exactly is a casual player and what gamers have as expectations towards the gaming sphere.  Some people think we’re too entitled, others that the terms being used are useless.  This is a natural growing process of the medium as it becomes more and more “mainstream”.  It’s still not acceptable in the way movie-philes are seen but it’s made great leaps and bounds from the basement geek stereotype.

Games like Uncharted, Zelda and Fallout are able to tell pretty amazing stories all while combining interesting gaming mechanics.  The most important part though, is player investment.  When you feel like Zelda is worth rescuing, you’ll re-try that boss for the 10th time.  When that colossus falls from the sky, you have an ounce of regret when you absorb its soul.  When you’ve put weeks into perfecting your MMO Raid Dance and finally accomplish something noteworthy with your group, it’s fulfilling.

The difference here is that the investment in an MMO is social.  You can play a single player game, experience the story, be impacted, want to take that next turn (damn you Civilization) and in the end, it’s an attachment between you and the game.  MMOs flip that where the mechanics force you to invest your time and through that time spent, you foster new relationships with the other players.  There’s a reason EQ guilds were so strong, it took weeks to get anything done.  You spent 75% of your time in chat waiting.  WoW’s insta-grouping mechanics means that you don’t have time to breathe, let alone type something down and build a community.

So as we move forward in this medium, with two opposing styles (single and multi player), one has to wonder which one is the true “game”?  Maybe both can be, just like there’s multiple types of films and books.  Should the mechanics of a game “force” you into being social?  Should there be adequate reward/reaction for being supportive?  Perhaps there’s simply too much focus on the player instead of the world and at that end, the world really is just a set piece rather than something the player wants to be a part of.

System Complexity

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There is a field of study called Game Theory which is essentially problem solving with win-case solutions.  Mathematics have a single correct answer for any given problem (be it a range or a value) yet real-world problems have so many interconnecting systems that you aren’t looking for an answer, you’re looking for a result.  For example, if we raise the purchase price of rice (which is supplied by 2 companies, world-wide) by 10%, what impact does it have on the world?

Moving specifically into the game sphere, the concept of inter-connecting mechanics has been seen for quite some time.  Oregon Trail had a few variables, Ultima 4 and beyond and most RPGs have elements that impact others, all along a chain.  Being oblivious to these mechanics isn’t detrimental if your focus is on the story/adventure and not so much on success.  I could build an Engineer in Mass Effect and still finish the game, even though a Soldier is obviously the superior power choice.  This “face” of the game allows players easy access without having to worry about the technical details.  Blizzard does this fairly well with their mantra of “easy to learn, difficult to master”.

One of the earlier games we learn to play is checkers.  A simple enough concepts, where movements are limited and the rules are simple.  You could teach a 5 year old to play and they would do reasonably well.  Give the same game to a 30 year old, with a penchant for strategy and you find yourself in a complex mathematical game.  There is suddenly a method to the madness.  Expand that up to Chess, where a 10 year old should be able to play.  Grandmasters of the game have the ability to play through hundreds of strategies in their minds, in a fraction of a second.  Put them up against a rookie and they will win but not without a lot of head scratching, wondering just what their opponent is trying to do.

That reminds me of a story where masters were asked to quickly look at a board with a game that had started, then replicate it on another.  Since they saw strategies instead of pieces, it was easy to replicate.  Have kids set up the pieces and suddenly the master’s were unable to replicate the boards – since strategies were removed.

Game mechanics are somewhat similar.  Street Fighter is notorious for pattern combat.  Seeing high level players compete, with fraction-of-a-second reflexes makes it seem amazing but what they don’t tell you is that they have the movesets memorized.  Guile has 3-4 attack patterns and if you can defend against those, you can defend against the best players.  The recent Batman: Arkham City has a flow to its combat system that makes it feel like a dance.  Once you get that pattern down, with a few variants, it’s really hard to die, even on the hardest difficulty.

MMORPGs are down the same vein.  You can level without strategy or pattern and even at max level, you can complete a lot of content by just button mashing.  If you want to execute the top tier content, you need to understand the mechanics (or have someone explain them to you) and then perfect your dance.  PvE content is somewhat flexible in this domain, since the numbers are stacked in your favor.  With 25 players, only 10 or so need to play optimally to succeed.  Heroic content needs 20 people.  PvP content however, is merciless.  WoW 3v3 arenas are dominated by the RMP (Rogue, Mage, Paladin) builds for a reason.  They offer huge burst damage, the best healer survival options and multiple control abilities.  Being able to lock down players completely for 10 seconds or more is simply masterful.  Waiting until the last second to interrupt that heal, means more damage dealt.  This is why E-Sports is so entertaining to those who want to learn the systems and seems completely fanatical to outsiders.

The best Starcraft players hover around 250 actions per minute (APM).  That’s 5 different actions, per second.  A starting player is closer to 50, making a pro 500% more effective at time management than a beginner.  Both are having fun, both have the same opportunity to compete, just on different platforms.

WoW’s LFR system lets casual players experience raid content and the heroic system allows the hardcore raiders to do so as well, with additional rewards.  CoD’s matchmaking system will let the rookie players play together and the pros on their own matches, ensuring a fairly even skill field at any given time.  SWTOR currently only provides a challenge to the casual market, limiting their potential userbase.  EvE is the complete opposite, putting up a large barrier to new players.

The mark of a good game, that meets multiple demographics, allows people to play a simple game if they want and provides them with appropriate rewards while allowing a more in-depth strategy to develop for those who want it.

Power Interaction

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A spider web you say?  Yes, it’s relevant.  Continuing on the theme of power, we’ve seen how it works and how it’s distributed.  Now it’s time to see how it interacts with other game systems – hence the web.

In most RPGs you will have some sort of customization option, be it feats in tabletop games or talents in MMOs.  This provides an extra set of variables of power and a flavor option for players.  It would be unbalanced if a character could play defensively, do as much damage as another character and also be a great healer – all at the same time.  Games use these systems to “slot” you into a specific role and balance you around it.  Of course, there’s always the illusion of choice.  With WoW and SWTOR, if you’re in a specific role for your class, you’re going to have to select 75% of the same things as everyone else.  Great for devs and if you think you had a choice, great for you.  In games like Rift or any sandbox game, devs have to balance against an imaginary baseline and ensure that all possible variables can reach that baseline.  Lots of work!  That’s why in those games, you rarely have multiple choices for tanking or healing characters – or at least their play is practically identical.

These talent choices might include bonuses to your power stats or new skills and through this comes additional power weights.  If all of a sudden your talents give you 10% critical chance, then it becomes less powerful (in a diminishing returns system) to have it on your gear.  If you have a powerful spell that only triggers after a critical hit, then it becomes even more attractive to stack on your gear.  These trigger effects (or procs) can reach huge damage potential for characters and unbalance the game.  If you get a boost of power every crit and your chance is 10%, it’s almost a 10% power boost.  If you have a 50% crit chance, then it’s a 50% power boost.  Developers counter this with hidden caps, so that a given item can only proc a certain amount of times per minute (PPM).  WoW Rogue poisons are a good example of this as is TOR’s Sage skill set.

An artificial limit, diminishing returns and stats through talents give developers more knobs to fiddle with to try and balance characters.  If there was but one path to power, any change would be massive in scope and near impossible to test to ensure other characters were not affected.  With more options to fiddle with, you can target specific activities of a given class and get smaller changes.

The final item I want to discuss here is resources.  In all games you have hit points – a measure of when you live or die.  The other stat is for your power moves, be it energy, mana, rage or what have you.  Hit points are affected by the power moves hitting you (attacks or heals) and aren’t so important other than as a safety cushion for errors.  Power though, has a huge impact on performance.  If you’re out of mana, you can’t do anything.

In many games, DPS characters have auto-attack abilities with their weapons and don’t require power.  Magical ranged characters have this as well but the damage is usually pitiful (wands mostly).  Regardless, these abilities take the full impact of your power stats and have no adverse effects.  In fact, for some characters in some games, this might be one of the major sources of your damage.  This should be the same for all characters in a game though – otherwise it becomes a balancing nightmare.

In a power system, power stats have a significant impact on your damage potential.  If you cast more often (through speed boosts), you go through your power reserves more quickly.       Sometimes the speed boost will impact your damage over time attacks, providing an extra boost of damage.  These systems have “magic numbers” to target, if that damage is significant.

In a variable power system (mage mana), where you can increase your power reserves, the power drain can be compensated for, to a degree.  In a closed power system (rogue energy), this means that you will reach a point where you will be staring at your screen waiting for more power.  In some systems, there is a rhythm to the power balance (out/in) that allows you to perform specific chains of attacks and keep neutral.  If you increase the speed of those attacks and don’t increase the power regeneration rate, then you change the rhythm and break rotations.  Rotations mean you can look at the game instead of your keyboard, waiting for things to become available. The game is more fun.

Let’s look at WoW’s Rogue, a character with a fixed power pool.  They have auto-attacks that take full benefit from power stats.  Their damage over time attacks gain benefit from power stats as well.  Their energy regeneration rate is also affected by their speed rating.  This provides a system with a rotation, at any given power stat rating, and a fallback damage option (auto-attacks) when things go really wrong.

Now let’s look at SWTOR’s Imperial Agent, another character with a fixed power pool.  There is no auto-attack, so if you want to deal damage, you have to press a button and skip over a power move.  Damage over time attacks gain a benefit from all power stats but speed.  Power regeneration rate is not affected by speed, so the more you have, the less abilities you can use over a period of time, even though they might activate quicker.  This means you usually want to avoid all forms of speed boost.

Rift has rogues and warriors with fixed energy systems but they avoided adding any speed mechanic to their game.  It makes it easier to balance, even with less customization.

In the end, the more power stats you have and the more variables there are on your given character path, the more the need for simulation becomes apparent.  Years ago, you could estimate the power potential of a character in WoW with a simple spreadsheet as the mechanics were simple.  Today, you need a simulation tool to get an idea of your power potential.  Rift, with a lack of speed mechanic, simplifies this a lot since you can figure out damage potential fairly easily.  This is of course offset by the fact that you have hundreds of possible character possibilities.  TOR has a complicated power stat set (power, force/tech, main stat, crit, surge, accuracy, alacrity) but 2 of them are useless for 90% of the playerbase.  This makes modelling very simply and you can find spreadsheets telling you exactly what works best.

When it comes down to it, the choice of game mechanics is up to you.  WoW uses a simple to learn hard to master approach, Rift provides an extra layer of choice for players and TOR really just let’s you play without worrying about numbers at all.  Options are plentiful.