Category Archives: Games

Neverwinter – Max Level

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I hit 60 today and in the last zone no less.  I cannot remember the last time I leveled to max and required to do all the content.  I should mention I did a lot of skirmishes in the lower levels and some foundry missions from time to time.

Neverwinter Cleric at 60

Purplez

The picture is from the web portal to the game.  Once you hit 60, the “end game” opens up and it’s gated with a GearScore (yes, that’s the name).  It’s a score that adds your defense and offense together.  When I hit 60, I didn’t have anywhere near enough GS to enter any top tier dungeon.  So I did what anyone would do, I went shopping!

Every purple item you see on my character was bought from the auction house.  Total cost was a bit under 100K Astral Diamonds.  Prices are all over the place too.  I got a helm for 9K but there were some for 200K up as well, with marginally better stats.  Now my gear score is ~7700 and I can access all but 5 dungeons.  A few more dungeon delves and I hope to gear up further.

Leveling a Cleric is odd.  You are not good at dealing damage and healing can be confusing since it’s mostly over time.  The 40s were tough in that I couldn’t damage or heal really well, so I was just running around avoiding attacks.  At level 50, I got Astral Shield.  This is an AE shield that reduces damage by what seems 50% AND gives you regeneration.  I won’t say it’s impossible to die, since I managed a few times, but it makes a whole lot of content trivial.

I did like the latter zones as more and more enemies have AE attacks and more of them group together.  One “pack” had a giant and 4 elementals.  Each has a massive AE attack, some with knockback.  Bad timing and you could get hit in the air for a few shots, land then get smacked with lava death.  It was like being stun-locked in PvP.  Tons of fun though!

For those that are wondering about the F2P portion, I can say that I leveled to 60 without spending a dime.  I could have mind you, for mounts and respecs and all that stuff.  The world is so instanced though, that a 110% mount makes all of 30 seconds of difference on any given map.  They look pretty, granted.

Will I spend money?  Yes.  A respec is coming and once the new content comes out I’ll drop some for that as well.

Neverwinter – Better Cleric Fight

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As I mentioned in the previous video post, I’ve swapped a few skills out. The most noticeable one is Astral Shield – the blue stuff on the ground.  Sweet bells this skill is overpowered.  It has a 90%+ uptime, reduces damage by what seems 50% and provides a massive regeneration rate to health.  I spent nearly the entire fight solo fighting the boss and never had to heal once because of this skill (and a bit of Forgemaster’s Flame).

Neverwinter – Yet Another Video

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I think I figured it out.  Companions can’t “dodge” attacks like regular players can.  If there’s a giant red spot on the ground, companions act like cats chasing laser beams.  Smoosh.  This big boy killed me twice before this video.  He came close a few more times as you can see.  Pretty sure I’ll be changing my skill lineup for the next boss.

I’m 52 now (linear levels, about 4 per night), so only a few more levels to go.  2 zones methinks.

Neverwinter – Cleric Fight

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Another video of my travels as a Cleric.  It’s getting much harder to keep the companion alive.  The boss after this one, a giant wolf, pretty much 1 shot my companion.  Sure made it fun!

The Hiccup with F2P

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If you follow MMOs, then you’ve likely noticed a trend in that F2P games are generally seen in poor light and a last recourse for subscription games.  People talk about the monetization of F2P games, while they only talk about the content of subscriptions.

Let’s get one thing straight off the bat, games need to make money.  It’s simple math.  A subscription model provides a stable income that you can project into the future with.  Generally, you don’t need to worry about your next week’s pay and as long as you don’t tick off the userbase, it’s pretty consistent.  F2P games, well, they require a continual investment to keep funding consistent.  Developers haven’t yet found the right balance of items to keep people pumping in money and have essentially devolved everything into lockboxes.

Would I play for free for 20 levels, then pay 10$ to get access to another 20?  Very likely if the game was good.  Would I do it for every character?  Maybe 2 or 3 of them, if the value/time equation made sense.  Once you have it though, you don’t need to buy it again.  Would I buy dungeon sets? Yup.   But again, that’s a 1 time purchase.  GW2 sort of worked this way, in that you buy the box, have access to everything.  B2P works when you have people coming and going.

Long-term though, this model doesn’t work as people have nothing to buy.  Paying 2$ to get a week’s pass to PvP makes sense if you PvP alot.  It doesn’t if you want to try 3 matches.  I think TOR did a pretty good job in this regard, where if you’re in the F2P version, you can buy passes for the high level content.  Since it’s consumable, it is a guaranteed money sink.  If I was planning on consuming a lot, the I’d go the subscription route.  Value for money and all that.

My personal thought is that all F2P games should have a subscription model for heavy consumers.  It should provide you with access to all the content with that subscription, including credits for the cash store.  If it means you wait 2 months to get the credits, then so be it, but it should be there.  All items that can be bought for cash, should be able to be sold on the AH.  Neverwinter and TOR do this decently.  All items that can be bought for cash and provide “power” should be 1-2 tiers below what can be acquired by in-game means.  Customization options should be consumed on use but allow you to save settings and try stuff out before you buy.

Personally, I think we’re on the breakpoint of a sustainable F2P market.  Lockboxes are not the future and are likely to be the proverbial straw on the camel’s back.  I am extremely curious to see Rift’s take on this, as they have always provided great value for money and understand the player’s perspective more than most.  It’s the reason I’ve kept subbed to them since launch, even if I don’t play as much as I’d like.  We, as a gaming community, have to move beyond the discussion of what payment models are good and which are bad and simply to the core of gaming – is this worth my time/money or not?

XBOX One Launch – Hmmm

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So the time came and went and Microsoft surprised next to no one when they showed next to nothing related to games and everything related to a new home media center.

Here’s a decent comparison chart between both the PS4 and the X1. I’m actually surprised that with 3 months of time between the Sony event and this one, that Microsoft couldn’t come up with something better than Kinect 2.0 and group Skype.

The real question heading into today was if the new X1 would require a persistent internet connection.  The answer is a definite maybe – Microsoft posted some stuff then deleted it.  From what we do understand, games will require a physical install, load instantly, and likely require a fee to transfer to another account.  Essentially killing the used game industry in a small blow.   Interesting.

Consoles are used as access points for games.  X360 and PS3 are very poor experiences compared to PCs today.  My PS3 can take 2 minutes or up to 10 depending on if there’s a patch I need.  My PC is just always ready.  My PS3 is tethered to a single screen, my laptop can connect to anything.  I have a controller for both.  The difference between what I’m typing on today and what was shown was the media console.

How exactly is cable TV and movies going to work on a console?  They spent 30 minutes on those features, which I’m sure Comcast, Bell and Rogers are asking questions about too.  Integrated with locally installed content?  Ok, I have that already.  With live TV?  What’s that going to cost?  Swap seamlessly between it all?  With 8 gigs of RAM?  That, to quote a great mind, is unpossible.

So after a few hours to think about it, I don’t see how Sony or Microsoft really gained “points” with the gaming crowd with either demonstration so far.  Neither showed anything that qualified as games.  They all touted more realism and more polygons, like every other console launch ever.  I do know Sony is aiming for a more “low cost/free” approach to gaming and that Microsoft is really adamant to keep the “pay me now and later, and some in-between too” model.  Considering that BOTH new consoles are service-based rather than simply tools to get to games, I am extremely curious to see how both companies will monetize the bells and whistles they’ve been touting.

Can I Have The Car With That Kitchen Sink?

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Wildstar.  Lovely, lovely Widstar.  First – read this.  I’ll wait.

 

Let’s go over the list so far.

  • Great art – check
  • Levels – check
  • Integrated zones – check
  • Dynamic content – check
  • Active combat (avoid the fire!) – check
  • Talent system – check
  • Customization – check
  • PvP – check
  • Dungeons – check
  • Housing – check
  • Mentoring – check
  • Dungeon housing – check?
  • Focus on tactics, not zerging – check
  • End-state content – check

I know of no game that launched with all this working.  I know of only a few that had half this list working.  You’re lucky if you get 2 of them right these days.

There are 3 possible outcomes that I can see.  First, the most probable.  The game launches, has everything in it, works about 50% of the time.  Two, the game launches, everything is broken and it’s a massive failure.  Three, they somehow manage to pull of the most amazingly smooth launch in history and become a shining beacon of tomorrow.  I’m hoping for #3, but I’m betting on #1.

Well, there is a fourth one.  Carbine is going to pull off the most massive troll prank in the history of gaming.

Neverwinter Action

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In every game that I’ve played, I’ve had a main character than was self-sufficient.  My gaming hours are strange, so grouping up was hard.  EQ grouping was an exercise in teeth pulling and it today it seems every other group has someone who can’t count to 10 without taking off their shoes.  EQ I was a necro (fear kiting!), WoW I was originally a Rogue (stun locks!), then swapped to a Shaman and finally a Monk.  Neverwinter, I play a Cleric.  I always had healing alts for some reason but this time it’s a main.

In nearly every game I can think of, healing is both targeted and direct.  This means you aim for someone, press a button and their health bar goes up.  A Neverwinter Cleric is not like that.  Since the game controls are mouse-look enabled, you have to point to your target to heal them.  Not going to happen in group combat.  Instead the game uses a “smart heal” system that automatically targets users based on lost health (both as a % and as a total).  Often times this will mean the tank but sometimes the heal hits the wrong person.  Fine.  That’s why the game uses a passive/over-time/ae heal structure.

Clerics have a debuff for their enemies called Astral Seal, which caused all attacks on the target to heal the attacker. There is a targeted AE heal – Bastion of Health – which is pretty solid but hard to target when people move.  Forgemaster’s Flame gives a damage effect to an enemy and heals the party that’s nearby.  Sunburst provides knockback + AE healing close to you.  Healing Word is targeted but it’s a heal over time.  The Divinity heal is targeted but also over time.  And… that’s pretty much it for healing.  You have 1 direct heal.  Everything else is more or less what I call “healing obfuscation”. You press buttons but people seem to be healed more or less by accident than on purpose.  Due to the way the game manages skills, you can’t just stand there and spam heals.

This system means that players have a huge responsibility for their own well-being.  Many a time I’ve had group members take a massive hit because they “stood in the fire” and died a few seconds later because of enemy focus fire.  As an action-rpg-mmo, everyone and their mom need to be moving around.  Dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodge.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a single group could complete anything without a healer past level 30.  It’s when to compare to other MMOs, healing is not going to instantly save lives.

This has two main benefits that I rather enjoy.  The first is player responsibility and role management.  Other than a Rogue standing on the boss, everyone else needs to run around and control the map.  It is extremely active.  Stand and spam will get you killed and you will get frustrated.  This will eventually weed out a lot of players in terms of group content.  Second is that bosses don’t have any abilities that need to be soaked as every big hit can be avoided.  BioShock Infinite (and games w/ regeneration shields) have a problem in that if you pump your shields, in order for an enemy to feel threatening, he needs to be able to drop your shields in a hit.  These are damage spikes and they are often unavoidable.  Horribad gameplay.  If you reward players for managing incoming damage, does it ever make the game more enjoyable.  But it is different and a type of different that not everyone will enjoy.

I can run an LFR in WoW while watching a movie – which I consider the summit of casual play.  I can’t do anything combat related in Neverwinter without actively moving and attacking, or I’m going to die in 10 seconds.  I expect Wildstar to be similar, based on the data provided so far.  DCUO sort of had this.  It’s a pile of fun.

Free to Play Foibles

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Since Rift is going F2P in June, quite a few people have voiced some concerns over the business model and the long term ramifications.  I think Wilhelm has the most sober approach to it all.  There are quite a few items I would like to discuss here that I think many people have either overlooked or simply not really thought much about.

A subscription game has a relatively assured income model.  You have X players you get X money.  As long as the playerbase is happy, you’re going to bring in money.  This part I don’t really get about RIFT since the quality has always been there but without Hartman at the helm, we all pretty much figured this was going to happen.  WoW makes about $50 million a month and can amortize/invest into future content development.  The thing about themeparks is that the developers determine the content and the players consume it.  Given WoW’s development cycle, you’re paying about $60-$100 per patch and then another $60 per expansion pack.  Take any other themepark F2P game and you can pay much, much less for content – sometimes nothing.  Sandboxes do not have this problem (hence UO still be subscription) and PvP games are pretty close to this.  This is rather clear if you take a step back from the actual game.

Where people tend to trip up a bit is two-fold.  First, a company needs to make money and people have to spend money.  I know, simple.  The thing about making money is that you have to consistently make it.  If you’re selling unlocks for an account, things that last forever, then after a while, people won’t be buying them if they’ve been there for a long time.  You need new players to buy that sort of stuff.  In order to make cash, you need to sell consumables.  In a level-based, gear-based system, what is consumable?  New content is one, but the price tag to develop it is high and you’re not sure to get the money back.  Character customizations work but again, unless you’re overwriting what was there before, you’re not going to have long term success.  Devs have yet to figure out this problem, instead they all rely on lockboxes, which is more or less gambling.

This is where it gets tricky.  As a general rule, people are stupid.  A person is smart, certainly.  Groups of people, in small enough quantities can show smarts – hence guilds.  Large groups, as is evident in any political circle, are as dumb as bricks – if not simply lemmings.  Neverwinter’s spam of who is successfully unlocking mounts in their gambling boxes invariably makes other people think “I can win too”.  Even the lottery is a tax on the stupid as you have a better chance to be hit by lightning twice before winning the lottery once.  People still buy dozens of tickets a week.

So you end up in the situation where developers have yet to find a consumable item that doesn’t make players feel like they are getting gouged (which is why we pay subscriptions right?) and resort to the lowest common denominator.  Which the public happily provides.

A third point that I need to bring up is the comparison to F2P in the Asian market.  The majority of those games are P2W, clearly.  And the majority only stay on the market for 12-18 months.  This is the polar opposite of the western F2P market.  For some reason I can’t yet figure out, our side of the ocean wants free games for years and years and years.  If you’re too cheap to pay 10$ a month for a F2P game, you shouldn’t complain that they are offering items to people who will.  If you’re unable to find things to buy at that price point, which I personally find issue with, then there’s simply a problem with the financial model of the game (*cough* SWTOR *cough*).

While I might think that RIFT could have continued for another 10 years with a subscription model, apparently they were getting enough feedback that F2P games were eating into their profits.  WoW is no different I’m sure.  Someone will have to make the tough decision of either guaranteed income and to weather the F2P storm while the market evolves or to jump into a pool of cannibalistic fish who will do everything to destroy their competition.

Is Free to Play here to stay?  Yes.  Is the current market deployment sustainable? No.  Did the exact same thing happen to subscriptions over the past 5 years?  Hell yes.

Neverwinter – Cleric Fight Video

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I did a bit of questing last night and the final solo boss of the zone was this guy.  The video gives you an idea of what mid-level Cleric combat looks like.  It’s much, much more active than any other MMO you’ve likely played.

Group combat is very similar, if not more active due to threat issues.