Category Archives: Games

Power Scaling

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This is in relation to the Power series I had a while back.  This particular post will deal with the relationship between challenge, power and time.

In most games, there is some level of challenge to reach a goal.  Beating a boss requires specific move set, typically a given set of power and a set amount of time.  Older games (and some new ones) ignore the power portion and just make you memorize patterns.  In those games, the challenge is 100% on the player’s end.

Newer games, specifically adventure games (MMOs included) give you power over time (gear, skills, levels) in order to defeat larger and larger challenges. WoW’s raids are initially very difficult but as time goes by, people get better gear and the challenge is gone.  Some bosses (in Vanilla WoW certainly) were simply impossible without given power levels or skills.  Today, the best of the best can beat a boss with little to no power while the rest of us need power upgrades to get to the same point.  Those are multi-dimensional challenges where the more power you gain over time, the less skill you actually need.  This is hard to balance and the expectations from the developers need to be clear.

Even in those games, the acquisition of power is typically linear.  Rarely does any one person get a massive (10% or more) increase in power in a single event.  This allows competition between players an no one person feeling like they absolutely must do something in particular to advance.  This avoids the brick-wall effect from older games (EQ, WoW Vanilla/BC, etc…)

Now, in single player games this is a bit different as you’re competing against yourself.  Devs can give you huge boosts (Ninja Gaiden, FF series) and you’re only looking at the mirror.  When a dev takes a single player game and adds a multiplayer component (Diablo 3), the competition and scaling factor goes out the window.  Those walls can be circumvented rather easily through mechanics external to the game (the auction house) and those single player brick walls become massive road blocks with a pay wall.

Diablo 3 Inferno mode is a great example of poor planning.  If you played without the Auction House, you could reach Act 1 with a couple dozen runs for gear in Hell mode.  Act 2 and Act 3/4 are completely impossible without the auction house or dozens of people farming for you.

The power increase from level 1 to level 60 is as thus:

  • DPS : 1 to 5000
  • Armor: 0 to 1500
  • Resists: 0 to 0

The power increase to do Act 1 Inferno

  • DPS: 10,000
  • Armor: 4000
  • Resists: 400

Act 2 and Act 3/4

  • DPS: 25,0000 – 35,0000
  • Armor: 6000-8000
  • Resists: 600-800

These are exponential increases in power where a single item can add 10% or even 50% increase in power.  This means that if players want to progress, they need those items in order to do so.  Farming is simply inefficient as there is a less than 1 in 10,000 chance for any given item to be an upgrade and you need 5-6 new ones in order to move through the acts.

Instead, you play the game for money then use that money to buy power.  Enter the RMAH, the exact tool to make real money off that process.

I am not trying to be cynical here since you can still acquire power through in-game means and just as much power as with cash.  The difference is in the speed of acquisition of power.  Real money you have, in-game money you don’t.  This also means that any content the developers have put in goes 100% out the window once someone has enough power to beat the content.  Which once you have enough cash, happens instantly.  There is no long-term game to be had.

It is an interesting example of social gaming, marketing and profiteering that happened here and I plan to revisit it again in a few months once a major content patch hits D3.

 

There Goes My Summer

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Steam Summer Sale has begun.

I’m going to be completely honest, 95% of the games on sale as worth much, much more than what they are being offered at and well worth the time to give a shot.  The Original XCOM is 2.50$.  If for some reason you haven’t played Skyrim, 40$.  Grimrock? 6$.

And get the Indie Bundles.  The games in those packages are amazing.

Do We Need New Consoles?

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I read an interesting article on IGN that states our current console era has lasted too long and it’s to Sony and Microsoft’s detriment.  The core concept is that due to poor scaling of platforms, innovation has been stiffled and forced developers to look at other platforms.

The XBOX360 launched in 2005, the PS3 in 2006.  You’re talking as old as World of Warcraft here.  It’s been a few years now that both companies have been able to recoup their initial losses but at the same time, they have less computing power than a 200$ laptop you can get today.

In terms of available market, there are 62 million 360s (including those the have died) and 63 million PS3s.  There are over 70 million iPhones sold so far this year and nearly everyone has a computer of some kind (over 1 billion at last count).  We’re not even talking the same league here.

The advantages to mobile and PC are the distribution of software and integration with the internet.  It’s easy to patch, easy to distribute, easy to sell.  Consoles require a disk (remember when we thought cartridges were the best?).  All devices can integrate with a home theatre system.

Developers that focus on consoles typically focus on recyclying their existing IPs.  You rarely get any indie games on a disk, they are all on XBLA or the PS Store – again, digital distribution.  Heck, they all have integration to NetFlix now (which is another story I will get into).

Are console games better?  They certainly sell a lot of copies but in terms of profit I would say that mobile and PC gaming is much more profitable.  An indie game like Legend of Grimrock would never have seen half the sales on a console.  True FPS games are still dominated by PC players.  The largest gaming prizes are still on the PC.  If I want to play a 10 year old PC game, I can.  Can’t say the same about console games.

So is it time for a new generation of consoles or simply an entirely new platform for content delivery?  What really differentiates a PC from a console today anyway?  I’m more apt to say that the next consoles will be delivery platforms and I’m sure we’re going to find out soon enough.

Nerf or Planned?

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Another Blizzard dev post triggered this post.  Currently, Act 3 &4 drop rates have seen a rather sharp decline than before the 1.03 patch, which was supposed to improve overall rates.  Here’s the particular quote.

With all the said “development and testing” that goes into these patches, how did the development team not identify the current loot table/drop rate issues? Doesn’t make sense.
The drop rates in 1.0.3 are exactly as they’re listed in the 1.0.3 design preview blog, so there were no issues as far as validity/accuracy of the changes. Obviously a reduction in drop rates later on in favor or increased drop rates earlier on (and overall more high end items circulating in the economy) wasn’t very popular. We agree it was a bad change, so we’ll be correcting it, but it wasn’t a quick enough change to get into 1.0.3a.

There are 2 ways to read this.

First, the drop rates for Act 3 & 4 were originally higher pre-1.03 and they purposefully reduced the drop rates.  This seems absurd.  Completely absurd.  Why would they reduce the rewards for the absolute hardest content?

Second, that they think there are too many high level items in the game at low levels – like Act 1 – and that they plan to make changes.  What changes?  Reduce the drop rates for all items?  Drop rates aren’t a problem, the AH is a problem.  Even a 0.1% change over 1 million Inferno players is 1,000 items.  How are they addressing the issue of bad high level drops?

Blizzard sure does make you scratch your head with their comments.

EA Financials and the Future

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As I quickly mentioned in the last post, EA’s stock price has dropped 50% in the past year, though most drastically since TOR’s launch period.  The total value lost is around 2 billion dollars.

The world 2nd largest gaming company (Activision being #1) lost half it’s value by hedging it’s bet on a game that was to compete with WoW and by all accounts has lost 90% of its playerbase in 6 months.  I guess they are praying that Madden and Battlefield can re-supply the coffers.  As an investor though, you really have to be wondering if the people leading the company are the ones that should be.

Let’s look at a couple misteps from EA over the years.  First and most obviously, is their inability to market any MMO.  They bought UO a few years after it’s prime, killed 3 expansion packs and have since left it alone.  The other ones that they’ve launched and failed are:

  • Motor City online
  • Earth and Beyond
  • Sims Online
  • Tiger Woods online
  • Warhammer Online
  • Star Wars Old Republic

I wouldn’t actually call any of their games real large successes but perhaps the Battlefield Heroes F2P game is the closest.  Even their Origin service has had issues.  First, they removed their games from Steam for no explained reason.  Then they launched a service that was always on, yet failed to connect.  Then they banned players who played storebought games through their service.  Then they simply had foot in mouth disease – lately the idea that Steam discounts are a bad idea while EA is simultaneously selling their games at 50% off.

Many of their new IPs have failed, for various reasons and those that have succeeded have been on a yearly pillage for some time now.   FIFA, NHL, Madden, Battlefield are all games with mediocre if barely noticeable improvements sold as a new game every year.  Any time there’s a small or medium company that makes decent games, EA will buy them up and turn them into a corporate beast.  BioWare is certainly the most prominent recent example where their quality games have been diluted to all new lows.

This coming from the company that used to send out amazing quality games, various IPs and always had people talking about them in a positive light.  10 years ago you’d be hard pressed to find someone who had something bad to say about EA.   Today’s it’s the complete opposite and investors have to be scratching their heads as to why that is.

What turn did EA take along the path that made the gamer base turn against them?  Was it a single step, did they take risks where inappropriate (Dante’s Inferno anyone?!), did they simply absorb the smaller companies and change the spirit of those games?  Is it possible for EA to turn the boat, the giant boat, so that they get back to their gaming roots and start giving us the quality games we know they are capable of producing?

As a gamer, you have to really worry when the #2 company loses half it’s value and is unable to turn out quality anymore.  That slope is getting slippery.

Did You Really Buy It?

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In a move that it sure to astound every gamer on the planet, Blizzard has decided to no longer honor your digital purchases for the first 72 hours.  Basically, you buy it and get to play the free-to-play version for up to 3 days.  I am pretty sure this amounts to fraud in some countries.

The irony of it all is that Blizzard (more specifically Activision) makes more money per day now on the RMAH than on box sales, so they can technically crap all over their playerbase as long as people are paying real cash for items.  And they get to take 15% off the top, twice.

Well, this just put Blizzard on my do-not-buy list.  Amazing that EA and Activision have managed to burn their bridges so effectively and rapidly.

On a side note, EA’s stock price has dropped 50% in the last year, more specifically since TOR’s launch.  A topic to expand on another post.

Fishing – The Marker of a Good MMO

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I started playing MMOs when UO launched.  It had fishing and it was an extremely basic version of the activity at first – basically fish and junk.  A while later they put in what I consider the most expansive fishing mini-game of all time – treasure chests.

I spent hours sailing across the sea fishing up all sorts of things.  Treasures chests, sea serpents, water elementals and finding more treasure maps.  I made a treasure hunter character just for this activity and it was awesome.  It was hard mind you, you could easily die when you dug up a level 5 chest but from start to finish, fishing was one of the main reasons I played UO for so long.

EQ had fishing but it was (and is?) still rather basic.  Pole, bait, find a lake each with different fish with different things to do.  I maxed it without question and still had fun filling in the dead spots waiting for the damn boats.

WoW had fishing as well and at first it was even simpler than EQs system.  It then added fishing pools, special fish, neat quests and amazing food.  Now we have pets.  I think I would put it as #2 in terms of fishing mini games for what I’ve played at least.

Rift recently (patch 1.7) put in fishing and after about 8 hours you can max what you need to.  There’s the inherent achievement/artifact mini game that comes along with it but fishing as a whole is a simple affair.  Perhaps they’ll put in some more stuff for people to do with it but I am finding myself fascinated with fishing once again.

It’s clear to me that I can’t stick with a game unless it has fishing and I think it’s one of those systems that shows that the rest of the game is solid enough for the devs to build something that’s nearly 100% flavor.  How well balanced does your game have to be before you have the cycles necessary to devote to such a skill set?

I wonder how many other MMOs that are trying to enter (or establish themselves) into the massive pool of games will take the effort to put in time wasters like fishing.  MMOs need time wasters with personal flavor.  Games without them are simply destined for niche markets.

Adventure RPGs, Where Are They Now?

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I’m in the middle of a Quest for Glory marathon – well slow-a-thon I think – and recently finished the 3rd game, arguably the weakest of the 5.  This series was the starting point for adventure RPGs and since then, we really haven’t see any strong outings.  Action RPGs are all over the place, were combat takes massive precedence over story.  At least recently, with Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 as good examples.  Where are the adventure games though?  The thrill of using your mind to solve something rather than your twitch muscles just seems like a lost art.

Where do I have to look now?  I can only find minor outings on mobile devices but a large game?  The last adventure game I can remember is Mist!  The main issue with adventure games is that there is typically only 1 solution to a given problem and that makes games have only 1 playthrough at best.  Heavy Rain sure did try to change this and had some moderate success but it felt more like a choose-your-adventure game rather than a true adventure.

I’d love to have a game with that Indiana Jones combination of brains and brawn once again.  Puzzles that have various solutions based not only on the tools available but on the skills you have.  If you’re a gunslinger, perhaps you can shoot the lights out in the room but if you’re an acrobat, you can sneak behind everyone instead.  And having your success based on a skill check too, with a failure bringing you back down to the common thread outcome – a fistfight.

I wonder who will take a stab at this niche in gaming that just isn’t seeing the love it deserves.

TOR Math

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Just a quicky. Let’s say that the TOR server merges are indicative of player population.  Let’s also say that at the peak, there were 1.7 million subscribers as EA/BW touted.

1.7 million over 211 servers = 8056 players per server

Now let’s use that number and go back to the current amount of servers, 23.

23 servers with 8056 players = 185,300.

A 90% drop in subscribers in under 6 months.  I am crossing my fingers that these numbers are wrong and that somehow BW has been able to boost those servers so that they can handle many more concurrent players.  Like 5 times more players.  Otherwise… holy jeez are we about to see one of the largest implosions in the history of online gaming.

Back Into the Rift

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I logged back into Rift last night and found my 4 characters just as I had left them.  Max Cleric and Warrior, mid range Mage and a started Rogue.   I hadn’t logged in for about 3 months and most of the characters had at least 1 soul build that was refunded.  This puts me in an interesting spot – the massive skill choices.

Most MMO games put you down a single path and you’re pretty much stuck in it until the game retires or you spend hours/days respecing to another role.  I don’t consider WoW’s 4 new skill talent trees as choice.  EvE has choice.  UO has choice.  Anyhoot, back to Rift.  With 66 points to spend across 8 trees, you have about 20 spots to put points each and 25 skills to unlock each.  You’re looking at hundreds of options per class, which to my knowledge, isn’t replicated in any other non-sandbox game.

I spent nearly 2 hours just fooling around, trying out new builds, reading about it and it got me thinking.  As high a the wall is to enter with a good build, you really have a lot of mid-range options for each class.  Sure, you’re going to find the super cleric build for solo work but you’re also able to find a variant that will work in 95% of the cases.  This is something that I miss from my games, the value of interesting and practical choices and a barrier of skill rather than builds.

Now the obvious argument here is that there are no baseline skills for classes and that will hundreds of options, casual players won’t be able to make heads or tails.  Trion has a nifty template system for players to get into the groove for advanced builds and it’s rather straightforward.  The templates are not optimal, in fact I would say they are middle of the pack but in their simplicity, you have access to all the skills you need to succeed.  If your class can perform “x role” then there’s a template that will give you the skills to do that and playing that template will teach you the actual role through the limited skills.  In that I mean that you won’t get a healing template with lots of DPS skill.  If you want that hybrid role, you have to make it yourself once you understand the core mechanics.

I plan on spending the majority of my time with my mage leveling up and trying different combinations of skills.  I made it there with a Necro pet but as I play I realize I can deal more damage and still heal with some other skills.  Tinkering is so much fun in Rift and I realize now how much I missed it.