Category Archives: Games

Core, Satellites, and Sprinkles

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Let’s pingback to Kaylriene on his post on SL thoughts after 2 months. This really is a larger game design challenge, and one that as consumers we can feel but often have trouble articulating. Why is it that some games just work despite clear flaws, while others fail even if they are relatively even?

I posit this is more related to psychology and analogous to Maslow’s tower of needs.

In game terms we can instead view this as the core systems, which are then supported or perhaps dependent on satellite systems. Take the first Mass Effect, the core systems were RPG focused on story and character development. The inventory was horrible, and everyone is best to forget the vehicle portions – yet they were not a requirement to enjoy the game. Invert that to something like Anthem, where the core systems were inventory (it’s a loot game after all) and combat. The latter was seen in a positive light, but the former was disastrous.

Or you know, look at Marvel Avengers. The core activities are meaningless and people have just noped their way out.

Look at every GOTY candidate. They all have near perfect core experiences, with some having some challenges on the satellite systems. God of War is near perfect from start to end, every aspect. Horizon’s combat, development, and storylines are great… yet it’s pulled down by the ubisoft-world-map-icon-palooza system. Some even start throwing sprinkles on top of it all, because their foundations are so solid. Hades is a spectacular achievement in system design, and yet they threw in extra cosmetics, an integrated soundtrack, relationship development, and a super complex dependency chart that dictates what dialogue is presented. We get to a point where we’re comparing an indie company as being objectively better than multi-billion dollar developers (such as Last of Us pt 2).

WoW View

But to WoW for a minute here. I do think that SL’s core systems (dungeons, covenants, raids, borrowed power) are all relatively well balanced. Maybe not perfect, but balanced within relatively acceptable levels. The things you need to do generally work. Where SL stumbles is in the things you can optionally do. I could post a bunch of things, you could read Kaylriene’s post, you could visit Reddit or the official forums… suffice to say the list is quite long. The major balance issues are in satellite systems. In the general sense, the rewards for activities in SL is much lower than in recent memory… which is sort of anathema to the concept of carrot and stick.

If we time travel a tad, it’s been a long time since the core systems ‘worked’.

  • BfA – few of the core systems worked. Whether the Azerite Gear or the Corrupted items, or AP grind. The satellite stuff was ok, but had some serious challenges.
  • Legion – the core was generally good, but the AP grind was painful, as well as the heavy RNG on legendaries
  • WoD – the garrison is well, maybe let’s not talk about it. This is where flight was disabled too I may add.
  • MoP – The core systems here worked, by and large. The initial rep grind was tough, and the “forging” system came into play.
  • Cataclysm – the only core was a new talents system, the rest was all satellite. That is a major genesis of the LFR system as no one was engaged in the content.
  • WoLK – the core here was solid, and implemented a pile of new systems. The challenge was on the reforging mechanic and talents, which were removed/revamped in Cata.
  • TBC – The core was amazing here, yet hindered by the attunement system that made it very hard to “catch up” to relevant content
  • Vanilla – I just refer to this as the true sequel to EQ. The core was just a refinement of that game, and changed the MMO landscape as a result.

Each person has a different driver to play a game. Some people need the core to be solid and ignore the satellites, others can ignore the core and just focus on the outside stuff (I’m sure some people enjoy pet battles more than dungeons). It’s not a common thing where a game can do both well. In the MMO space, designers tend to focus on core as the driver for the multiplayer aspect, which in turn drives retention. It is FAR from easy, it requires vision and passion. It certainly requires consuming your product.

Here’s hoping that somewhere in this mess, we as consumers can find a better way to recognize and reward quality. And where it doesn’t exist, find a way to help the developers (who are by and large extra passionate) to find their way forward.

Kyrian Trial of Ascension

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With the rather ho-hum review so far, I did want to hit on something I think is working rather well. While each covenant has their own unique activity, I’ve only invested real time into the Kyrian one. The Trial of Ascension is a sort of brawlers guild variant, where you play as one of three characters against boss events. It’s entirely solo content.

I’m a bad news / good news person. So the bad stuff first.

  • You need to farm materials (5 types) to unlock new enemies (10 of them), create items (5 of them) and then various single use items. They drop in all 4 zones, with a 20% rate on specific mobs. Alternatively, you can buy a box with 20 of each in them from 5 Medallions of Service (MoS)
  • It costs 1 MoS per boss attempt. MoS are not a guaranteed drop or reward. You can craft 1 MoS for 8x of each farmable material, which is super painful.
  • If you go into a boss blind, you will not succeed on the first attempt (reasonable!) Some bosses have 1 hit kills. But it costs you a MoS.
  • It costs 45,000 anima to unlock all the bosses and difficulties. It costs a further 45,000 anima to unlock all the rewards (I hear some prince in Nigeria is interested in this model). Imagine you got a drop from a raid boss and it cost you 1000 anima to use it?

Long story short, it’s a grind to access this activity, a grind to participate, and another grind to claim your rewards.

Now for the good stuff!

  • Each of the 10 bosses has unique mechanics that change depending on difficulty. The quests to unlock them can be interesting in their own right. There’s very limited RNG, nearly everything is pattern based.
  • You have 3 characters to choose from, each with their strengths and weaknesses.
  • You have the option to equip gear (permanent) or charms (1 time use) to add benefits to a run. Things like improved speed, a shield, healing, more damage and whatnot.
  • The increased difficulty requires smart playing to get through. Face tanking isn’t an option. Depending on your normal class, this will require some interesting mechanical changes.
  • All stats are normalized, meaning your regular character’s gear has no impact.
  • Most fights take less than 5 minutes.
  • The challenge is learning the appropriate tactics and then executing them as close to perfect as possible.

Blizzard has built a very interesting activity that’s a merger of the Withering and Mage Tower events from Legion. It’s an active battle simulator that treats all players the same, and has a cost of entry. That is a reasonable design goal (maybe less in an MMO, since it’s solo only) that as a distinct activity, it really quite fun.

Yet, Blizz being Blizz, they’ve put in a ridiculous grind to participate in the fun. The mats require a massive grind. The MoS require you to do Callings for the best drop chance. The anima costs are completely insane given the current drop rates from content. It also requires renown unlocks to access 2 of the 3 characters since you need to have bindings to them. These are simple fixes… increase the drop rates on the grind to 100%, drop multiple MoS per calling (5 per day), cut the anima investment costs by 50% and remove all anima costs for the rewards. It will still take a month to get through all the content. Focus on the actual content as the time investment, rather than granting access to the activity.

As it is now, this feels like some of the best content in SL is something everyone is going to avoid. I’d be curious as to how the activities feel in other Covenants.

Mandatory Buffet

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The only benefit to consumers for a buffet is the sheer variety of options for a fixed cost. The quality is rarely that of a focused restaurant. The benefit to the restaurant is that they have a much larger client base and a rather consistent income stream because of it. The expense management aspect is similar to other restaurants (people make different choices), yet there can be massive spikes with no corresponding income spike. You should be able to identify trends and accommodate, but the launch is going to be rough – or if you get a sports team show up. Consumers generally sour on buffets if there is not enough food, or if the quality dips beyond a certain level (e.g. it’s cold).

Why is this relevant? Most games offer a buffet type approach. Assassin’s Creed is a perfect example of this, you have dozens of possible activities. MMOs also have this, in that you can craft, hunt, dungeon, raid, or other. The difference is in the structure of the buffet in that things are an option or not.

MMO players have differing goals. Some like the social part, some the achievements, some discovery, some the competition. Most games have a gate that prevents access to a given function, either player level or player power. Some are soft gates (you can try something while underpowered but it will be very hard) or they are hard gates (you simply cannot access the feature).

In WoW, there are both. The hard gates are usually related to levels (90% of the game is locked at max level), or to a quest. The quests are notable in WoW, as most items are time gated. Even if you have all the pre-requisites done, you still have to wait for that gate to be accessible (covenant storylines, twisting corridors). The soft gates are power related, or ilevel. You need a certain level to do dungeons, another for raiding, and so on. If you want to access the full buffet, then you need to increase your power level or renown level.

To increase renown, you need to do your covenant quests. These require you to do a set of activities (you don’t get to choose which):

  • collect souls from the maw (weekly)
  • collect 1000 anima (weekly) – anima comes from WQ + dungeons
  • complete some combination world quests (daily)
  • complete a specific dungeon (uncommon daily)
  • complete a PvP event

If you want to increase your power level, you need to:

  • complete the odd WQ that has a reward
  • complete the covenant story (through renown + dungeons) and boost your item level
  • complete relevant dungeons and get a drop
  • complete raids and get a drop
  • complete PvP and raise your rank
  • open the weekly vault, which stems from completing mythic+ dungeons, raids, and/or PvP
  • complete the weekly open world boss and get a drop
  • complete 2+ Torghast runs to get ash for legendary upgrades

Assuming you’re a fresh 60, that’s a big buffet! Nearly all of it is right at your door when you start too. You’re going to try as many pieces as you can, then develop a taste for one or two. Then you realize you’ll need…

  • to do WQ for the weekly anima quest
  • to run the Maw once a week for the souls quest
  • to do WQ for renown increases
  • to run Torghast multiple times (at least twice) to get soul ash for your legendary
  • to PvP for renown and vault rewards
  • to raid for vault rewards
  • to run M+ dungeons for vault rewards

“Need” may be a harsh word, you don’t need to do any of it. You can ignore all the systems if you want, and just do the content you enjoy. The game will hamper that enjoyment if you don’t engage in more systems, but that’s entirely up to you. That loot is so incredibly sparse, if ever you do see something drop, you’re going to jump on it and forcibly try any avenue to get that artificial number to increase.

The cynic in me see this design approach as on par with mobile games and their focus on engagement. Or, as we’ve all seen reported, Monthly Average Users (MAU). The game is purposefully designed to tunnel you into ALL activities, whether you enjoy it or not. If you don’t enjoy content and (feel the) need to do it, then that is not a positive feedback loop. If that content is not working properly (e.g. Beastwarrens bugs, placeholders in Torghast, anima rewards that don’t scale, broken mission tables, broken WQ gimmicks, etc…) and you need to do it, then ugh.

In the individual mechanism space, on the whole, Shadowlands improves on BfA. You never have a reversion of power. The borrowed power mechanic doesn’t scale to absolutely stupid levels. You’re never looking at triple RNG (-forging). But as I’ve mentioned before, I can’t see how the game could have gotten worse than BfA. It reminds me of an Eddie Murphy joke.

Shadowlands feels like this.

Covenants

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Or, as I like to call them, Class Halls 2.0.

There’s been a lot of talk about Covenants, as they are the main feature of Shadowlands – driving the majority of the story, providing a reward structure, and a “borrowed power” mechanic. Picking one is easy. Changing one means you’re losing ~2 weeks of time gated content.

I’ve got Kyrian and Venthyr storylines running. They are interesting and varied, taking place across multiple zones. I won’t go into a pile of details, due to spoilers. I would be surprised if anyone picked a Covenant due to the story (maybe for aesthetics though, which is another topic). They are time gated, and catch up mechanics are present. They do not, as of yet, appear to intersect.

The reward structure is very similar in both. You get a travel hub to speed up zone travel, which is great, cause zone travel is horrendous. Side note – crappy travel means I harvest a ton of herbs/ore without really trying. Somewhere around 200k in profit in 3 weeks. You get access to a very odd mission table structure that is completely unbalanced. Venthyr/Kyrian are running at half the power of the other two factions, and the UI is so bad that it’s frankly not worth trying unless you use something like Venture Plan. Another item is a sort of temporary event generator that you’ll likely do once and never again – primarily due to the horrendous travel time and lack of rewards. Finally, each faction gets their own unique side activity. Venthyr throw parties, Kyrian have a very interesting battle arena, gated through grinding components. It’s a cool concept, meant to emphasize world exploration. Maybe at some point I’ll do more of it.

A small pit stop on identifying people in a covenant. It seems a lost opportunity that people within a covenant would not want to work together, or identify other people in their covenant. Tabards at the minimum. Player power, not so much, cause that would sway guild/player choice. Yet there are certainly some opportunities here… like more Stygia if you group in the Maw. Even the Horde / Alliance differentiator is completely absent here.

The borrowed power though, that’s where things go a bit sideways. There are lateral choices for some classes, and outright bad choices for others. DH can swap between Kyrian and Venthyr, but Necrolords are an insanely bad choice. Icy-Veins has a pretty good summary of how people have selected their covenants. The “pretty” factions lead, which further pushes the Elf/Blood Elf value. Necrolords are 16% of the total, which given both their ability and unique activity… yeah.

What’s interesting to me is the breakdown on a class basis. For multi-spec classes, this can get a bit muddy as people have a preference. That Druids pick Night Fae first, in all specs, and like 9:1… that’s a problem. Same with Paladins and Monks for Kyrian. The “pure DPS” classes you’d expect somewhat flat choices, though it’s more like no one wants to be a Necrolord Mage.

Is it hard to balance skills across all the class/spec variations? Heck ya. Is it OK to have preferences, sure. Less OK is when one option is superior to all others. This falls back into the argument of paragon/renegade, where is everyone makes the same choice, there really isn’t a choice to be made. It’s also a challenge from a design perspective, as you can’t really change the powers too much, as people will then math it out and show that a new bad choice is present and want compensation to change. It’s a very interesting spot they’ve painted themselves into.

In a general sense, I think Convenants work. They provide thematic tools to expand on the player experience. Covenant abilities could have used more time in the oven, but the issue at hand is related to reducing the penalty from swapping between choices (which will get worse as more renown ranks are unlocked). Combat Tables should just be removed from the game at this point, right up there with Archeology.

Overall it sort of works. This is a bit like falling upwards from BfA though. They are better than garrisons in that they are not instanced, and don’t pump out insane raid level rewards. But they are worse in story telling as compared to class halls. When “it’s ok” is seen an improvement, expectations are out of whack.

Ring in the Year

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Clearly 2020 sucked. Some good bits in there, but overall still something I’m happy is in the rear-view mirror. 2021 at least has some measure of hope.

The year reinforced the idea that my kids have won the ovarian lottery. The only other possible advantage they could have had is being male (I write this conscious of its implications), and even then in my country the gap is a whole lot smaller than others. They have 2 well-to-do, bilingual, caring, educated parents, who have had no financial impacts from this pandemic. They were provided with equipment to continue learning at a distance. Full health care. If 2020 did something right, it was making me more aware of that situation and thankful for it.

2020 did bring us Hades, which is just a simple testament to all that is good in gaming. A developer that respects its clients, its staff, and has a clear vision in development. Ghost of Tsushima is in a similar boat, though a larger organization with a tad more resources. The less said about others, the better. Gaming was a major outlet for most of the global population, if sales are any indication.

WoW launched an expansion, which is an improvement on BfA. Admittedly, it would seem to be more effort to be worse than BfA, so that is a somewhat backhanded compliment. The game has certainly not solved the borrowed power problem, in fact it’s pretty much doubled down on it here. People are cool with it because the power is only in one direction, compared to BfA’s continual power loss. My single largest gripe here is the horrible travel mechanics. The removal of the Flight Master’s whistle is shades of dumb on par with the initial removal of flying. Bastion has next to no flight points, and Revendreth is a vertical nightmare. And the Maw is just… for a game pillar, it’s still suffering from broken hunts (which are how you improve movement).

Kids are still kicking it with Minecraft. To a rather crazy degree working together. They don’t do any chat-based online games, for sanity reasons mostly. So no Fortnite in this house, while Rocket League is a-ok.

The wife and I watched the 2 seasons of The Mandalorian over the holiday break. Having Dave Filoni involved is evident in the quality and consistency of the storylines. The rotating directors make for varied storytelling approaches as well. I won’t lie, I geeked out fierce in the Krait dragon battle. No deep spoilers here, but the ending of season 2 pretty much closed the loop on nearly every thread that mattered to me. I can see how it will be used as a launching pad for a half dozen other Star Wars stories.

Wonder Woman ’84 was also on deck as my wife is a major fan. I really liked the first one (minus the last battle), and this one is ok I guess. There’s a lot of logic leaps in to follow here, even for a superhero movie. And it’s hard to ignore the fact that Wonder Woman rapes a stranger, when the film goes to great efforts to paint the opposite picture for Cheetah. It looks cool, and it’s better than nearly every other DC movie out there.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel that my hockey will start again in the fall. Most of the country should have their shots by then. I am missing it something fierce. The backyard rink is up and running, though the very mild weather is making is a tad tougher than normal to manage. Snowshoeing is likely the main activity for the foreseeable future.

Even the summer is looking somewhat promising. The cottage is great as a getaway, but even better when we’re able to share it with people. The whole remote work efforts are making me strongly consider getting high speed internet for a few months, which is going to be costly but likely practical. I could always get a cell boost up, which is going to be a similar cost but only 1 time.

2021 has some interesting games on line. Horizon 2, God of War 2, Monster Hunter Rise (where I will be super tempted to get a Switch), maybe a clean Baldur’s Gate 3, Deathloop, Gotham Knights, and a slew of more indies all look promising. And without hockey, my gaming budget is a LOT higher. If ever video cards start to actually be launched, maybe I’ll build a new rig. Upgrading bits is fine, but a full rig today makes little sense.

As for the blog, 2020 was one of my more active years. I needed it for a multitude of reasons, and don’t see that going away in 2021. I’ll add a bit more to my reading list, as there are some really neat voices out there that provide some great perspectives.

Next post will follow the annual predictions that most blogs put out. Take care and happy new year!

Cyberpunk Setting New Bars

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Most people are aware of the concept of precedence. Primarily used in legal settings, this allows you to compare two items that are similar and respond in a similar fashion. When the issue is brand new, then there’s a big argument around it, getting to a nation’s highest court. The ruling then sets precedence, allowing for future similar discussions to be solved much quicker. (The whole Trump voting thing lost because of precedence, and on rulings that a first day law student would know better than to try.)

The psychological impact of precedence is the real matter at hand. Individuals like surprises, people do not. Society is based on a set of rules and has trouble adapting when those rules are challenged or changed. Subverting expectation works in things like art, but rarely in other mediums. Uber decimated the taxi industry (and still doesn’t pay people enough, nor does the company actually make money). The pandemic has shown that society can manage work remotely – at least a LOT more than previously thought. That will cut the travel/hospitality industry to the knees, or any business dependent on “rush hour”. Change is by nature disruptive, but it also tends to set new expectation. And from that point on, precedence is set.

Precedence in gaming is a thing too. WoW is the bar by which nearly every MMO has been judged for 15 years! If your quests don’t have a ! around them, are they quests? If it doesn’t play like FIFA, is it really football/soccer? People don’t say “it’s a tactical game”, they say it plays like XCOM. There are so many games we’re forced to compare, and those comparisons have judgment.

All of that to Cyberpunk. Not the first company that’s an industry darling to make a mistake. It’s not the first game to have crazy hype. It is not the first game to promise so much more than it delivered. It is not the first game to subject its developers to insane crunch. It’s not the first game to launch to meet stockholder demands. And it’s not the first game to offer generous refunds.

You don’t have to look too far back here. Anthem was in this bucket. The good news for players was the EA pass structure, meaning most people were out like $20 instead of full retail. Diablo 3 offered refunds for everyone for a month after launch. Star Citizen still has not launched, and I’m astounded that it’s not the largest case of gaming fraud in history. Day 1 kitchen sink patches are expected now. There are plenty of discreet examples across time that show that this has happened before. Plenty of reasons that explain why pre-orders are bad for everyone.

What Cyberpunk has done instead is bring this all to 11.

  • CD Projekt was riding ultra high after a great track record – including the highly regarded Witcher 3.
  • It’s been hyped like mad for 8 years, and been taking pre-orders for nearly 3
  • It clearly launched in a overly buggy state, and is for practical purposes, not playable on last-gen consoles. This makes everyone look bad, including Sony/MS.
  • It promised, multiple times, to not have crunch. Then management demanded it for the last 6 months. They will, certainly, have a loss of talent because of this choice.
  • It’s launch was primarily a financial matter, so that they could claim the pre-order negative balance. It sold 8 million of them! WoW Shadowlands was the “highest ever” with 3.7m, a week before. Side note – it also has cost the company ~20% of total value due to stock depreciation (~$1.8b dollars), way more than the pre-orders generated.
  • The refunds are unheard of. You can’t even buy the game digitally right now for anything but PC. If you do have a copy, every single vendor is offering some form of refund. See prior line item to get an idea of the financial impacts of this.

Many games have launched in a state similar to this. Few have checked as many boxes as Cyberpunk, and checked them so forcefully. Some have come back from the dead (No Man’s Land), most have just cut their losses and moved on. This absolutely spectacular failure and set of consequences could have and should have been mitigated. Consumers are anti-ethical by nature, they could give 2 shits about crunch as long as the product has value (RDR2 in gaming, and the existence of WalMart in general). This was a cluster of mistakes that anyone with half a brain should have seen coming, and yet, here we are.

No, what Cyberpunk has actually done is a much larger problem. They’ve set a precedence for consequences of failure so absolute that the next person to fail even remotely close has to measure up to this response. How refunds are managed, and the decision to support or tank a game here on out for video game is the real target. This may not seem like a big deal to consumers, refunds are part of life right? Yeah, on the other side of the machine is a financial team that measures risk and liability. 80% of the people impacted by that decision have zero power to impact it. EA and Acti/Blizzard execs are sweating bullets thinking “this could be us!”

The optimist in me says this will mean games will have to launch with higher QA standards than what we’ve seen. That quality will not only be rewarded, but expected. The pessimist in me says that this will put an elite bar on games where anything that doesn’t score say an 80 on metacritic is a target for a massive refund drive from gamers, and that there really isn’t any way for suppliers to push back.

And to close here, I feel ultra bad for the CD Projekt development team. They knew this was going to happen (well, maybe not the refunds) and management did nothing. They did nothing multiple times! The company has lost billions of dollars from this. That usually comes with consequences, and these folks do not need that additional stress over the holidays. All because someone wanted to print a number on a quarterly review. Rather than a few execs taking a smaller bonus, they’ve now put the entire company under the lens.

Development Work

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A long while ago, I worked as a code monkey for a small company. Google searches indicate they are still operating, that’s oddly comforting. I’ve worked quite a few IT jobs in the past 20 odd years, and while the technology may have changed, the processes really haven’t all that much. SDLC is still the same idea, except now we call crunch things like “SCRUM” or “AGILE”. Back then, we just called it “get it done”. Everything was pretty fresh in the early ‘00s, and the pasty basement dwellers only needed a case of Coke to meet a deliverable.

Today’s world is different, it’s bigger for one. Coding is not a 1 person shop anymore, it’s dozens of people, if not hundreds. It’s commenting code, it‘s libraries, it’s devshops, it’s grey hacks, pen-tests, throttling, package controls and a dozen other things. Oh, and QA, the one thing we always never had time to do.

There’s a fair chunk of news about how companies treat their staff, and whether crunch comes with the game or not. Crunch exists for only one reason, bad management. Either they didn’t scope out the work properly, made assumptions with mitigations that weren’t accurate, or failed to manage the schedule and their bosses. I’ve been both impacted, and was the cause of crunch. It’s not that crunch “suddenly shows up”, it’s that priorities are not managed. You don’t realize with a month to go that you need yet another month, you defer making the decision until things are that red.

This topic is top of mind when comparing things like Cyberpunk 2077 and Hades, two games that were up for best game direction and somehow Cyberpunk 2077 won. I don’t begrudge CD Projekt delaying the game over so many years to deliver something, I think that’s the right approach. And that the developers share in overall profits is great. Added incentives against meta critic scores annoys me to no end (which are apparently ignored here, just given out). It’s the last 6 months of dev work, after 8 years of effort. It’s the last minute delays that no one is aware of until media lines are out. This isn’t some line worker, or supervisor. I doubt it’s even at the director level. This is top brass stuff finally making the right call, understanding that the years of effort making it are about to be undone with a buggy mess that will just mean more crunch to patch.

And let’s not forget what Rockstar went through to get RDR2 out the door. 80 hour work weeks are insane.

Then you look at Hades, where early access (beta) showed where they were going with no big expectations past that. Things came out when they were clean, and iteration was key. Staff has mandatory 20 days off a year, and then there’s a mental health check to manage workload. In short, the people matter more than the work, which obviously creates a better work environment, and therefore a better product.

Time Management

Who hasn’t tried to do something while completely exhausted? How often does that thing go the way you want it to? I’ve made TONS of mistakes while exhausted that took me longer to fix than if I had just come back to it later. Doing it once and a while, to get over some unexpected emergency (like helping someone manage their personal stuff), that is part of the job of being manager. Doing it consistently, over multiple weeks and months… you never get a chance to recover and will continue to make mistakes along the way.

Now, compound that over dozens of people, all working at much less than 100%, for long periods of time. Their heart is there (assuming they are compensated), but their brains aren’t.

Motivators

There are 2 big things that motivate people – money and pride. For most people, the money thing isn’t really motivating, because you’ll get paid on this game or the next. If you get a stock bonus, then you’ll get it eventually. Few people ever get a bonus for meeting a milestone, except executives. Few people ever get a bonus due to share performance, executives excepted as well. Now the reality is that cash flow is required to pay people to work on a game. No money in = no game development work done.

Pride though, that’s a big one. No one should be ok with delivering a stinker. They may feel powerless in that space (again, a failure of management) but they are not actively trying to make a bad experience. There’s not a chance any dev working on Anthem was looking at that product and going “yeah, that’s good”. But someone in that path decided it had to ship, no matter the state of affairs.

Money Matters

Tangent here for a sec. Codemasters is entertaining an offer from EA for 1.2 BILLION dollars. Take Two had offered just under 1 BILLION. Primarily for the Dirt and F1 franchises. That’s insane. Taking a step back, the EA bid is seen as defensive, since they already have a bunch of racing franchises – defensive meaning they will cut like crazy. Take Two would benefit from extra work, but no mistakes either, some serious cuts would follow. Any Codemaster employee that is not an executive (who is certainly going to gain from the stock purchase) is likely updating their resume right now. This is the business of entertainment.

Come Backs

There are only so many FF14, For Honor, and No Man’s Sky possible. Very, very rarely will you see something launch as a right mess and come back to some measure of success. Instead you’ll get lists like this one (I am still ticked that Infinite Crisis didn’t work). None of them died out of the gate, each one had a team working feverishly to do what should have happened before launch. Each one eventually came to the conclusion that the battle couldn’t be won – curious as to how many devs actually came to this conclusion before their bosses.

Solutions

Is there a single answer to all this? You’ll see “union” listed as top of pile, and certainly there’s some serious value here. Even just recognizing the “class of worker” would have huge impacts. Should games simply cost more? How does something like Hades or Into the Breach become profitable yet ME: Andromeda is a hot mess? Maybe the hype cycles need to be cut. Maybe the idea of meta critic bonuses have to be eliminated. Maybe the consumer needs to be educated and make smarter purchases? (If FIFA/NFL are any indication, I have a better chance of getting pregnant)

The real challenge here is that coders are often disposable. Entry level positions are everywhere, and an environmental artist graduates every 20 minutes. Someone coming into the market thinks it’s part of the deal to bleed themselves dry to get something out the door because they are competing against someone who will. It’s a right nightmare.

Talking about it is a major first step. Having a pile of good examples to share is another. Replacing the “old guard” is even more important, where people with different ideas come to lead. Understanding that our darling dev shops from yesterday are large conglomerates beholden to shareholders today is another. Buying stock of these companies and being part of the stakeholder process is another… they were a couple votes shy of cutting Bobby Kotick’s salary bonuses last time. Making personal purchase choices is always an option, but that lives in a grey zone that each person manages to their own delight.

Avengers Design

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All looters have one purpose, make imaginary numbers go up through random drops, allowing for access to content that provides larger numbers. In some games, this is an inverted pyramid, where more content gets exposed as you get larger numbers, in others it’s a more narrowed view of options. In the MMO space, it’s often just raids. In the action genre, it’s rogue like dungeons. In shooters, it tends to be a mix of group focused content – probably due to the fact that consoles run the show.

Drops

Avengers manages drops in three methods. Completing a mission draws from a pool of items. Opening chests (which themselves have quality markers) drop gear. Finally, enemies drop items with higher odds on tougher opponents, like completing a waypoint. Let’s run through a good example.

Day of the Remains is an Inhuman mission that you eventually access in the main campaign. You can replay it, with a recommended power level of 25. You can certainly run it earlier, but you’re gonna die a lot! The mission has an chance for a chest at the start, a bunker with up to 4 chests to the left of the first waypoint, another bunker with up to 3 chests at the 2nd waypoint, 2 chests in locked rooms at the 3rd waypoint, and another chest near the main road (where you can rescue an Inhuman). My best runs have 12 chests and you never need to fire a shot. If you do end up fighting, then then 2nd, 3rd and 4th waypoints will all drop a few items (5 or so) and you get something for killing the 2 adaptoids at the end. If you need experience, then run the waypoints (<10mins). If you only need power levels (gear), then skip it all and focus on chests (~3 mins). I’ve run all the mission types, this is really the most efficient way. From start to end it takes less than 3 hours to reach 50/130.

Missions

These all focus on the concept of way points. If you skip one, then the next one won’t spawn. In the more open-world spaces, you’ll find some optional things to do – either a chest to get, an inhuman to free, or a tough enemy that guarantees a drop. In the tighter quarters, you only ever find locked chests.

The waypoints themselves focus on specific activities. A capture/hold event, destroy specific things, kill all enemies, kill elite enemies, or kill a specific target. In the open world, you have things between you and the objective that you can ignore. In the tighter spaces, the waypoint is often behind a console you need to interact with, behind a mess of enemies. Hives are “the” end game activity and you want to skip as much “trash” as possible to get to the next objective. Super advantage to flyers here, to a crazy degree. Major disadvantage to Hulk as he’s so big and gets stuck on stuff.

There are some missions that mix and match this stuff. The boss missions have you outside, then inside for a bit, then back outside for a large fight. Vaults have you outside trying to find the front door, then the rest is a mix of capture/hold mechanics against waves of enemies. They can vary in duration from something as low as 3 minutes to closer to an hour. It’s really great to have that level of variety.

But, not all things are created equal. Drops (as above) need triggers. If there aren’t chests, then you need a lot of waypoints. If a mission only has 1 waypoint and no chests… well you’re not going to get much out of it. Enter Hives.

Hives

I mentioned how action looters tend to have rogue like dungeons, and Avengers takes this as a foundation. Regular Hives have 8 floors to clear, and 1 waypoint to start the activity. You can die, but you restart a floor. Chests can spawn in the “trash” space between waypoints. For now, all Hives take place in the same building-basement tileset, which only have a dozen or so layouts. There’s less random here than say, Diablo 3.

Each waypoint will drop something, though there isn’t one that has better stuff than another. You can get a great drop from the first one and junk all the rest. They don’t take very long, maybe 10 minutes to clear.

Mega Hives are different. These are 48 floors (6 groups of 8 floors) where the entire squad needs to have power level 130. All 4 characters. In theory, this is a great incentive for multiplayer. The weird mechanic here, and only here, is that if you die you swap lead characters. All 4 characters die and you restart from floor 1. Each floor takes ~2 minutes to clear. In the best of cases, you’re here for 45 minutes. You don’t lose any of the gear, but you lose all the progress. And that final completion has guaranteed chance to drop an exotic (the best quality level item). The concept here is really solid, it’s that in practice Mega Hives are just too damn long and for most people you’re better off not playing with other people… AI companion deaths don’t count.

Load Times

This is an annoyance, as any waypoint trigger from a console generates an elevator cutscene. It doesn’t last long, maybe 5 seconds, but it really breaks the flow. You’ll get 2 of these for almost every Hive floor. It’s dumb, full stop. I am not against some loading, in particular for boss arena fights, but when you’re spending 20seconds in a corridor between loading screens, it makes you question why any of it exists. This is aside from the speech intros to every mission, which are not skipable. This effectively “raises the floor” of load times, so that you don’t end up zoning in and half the team has cleared most of the content, or has already moved to the next loading screen. Bigger areas would help a lot here, though I have to assume this is a resource issue in zone design.

Moving Forward

The core here is really quite good. The concept of Vaults and larger Hives seems ripe for interesting runs. They would need some additional tile sets so that it isn’t the same walls all the time, which is certainly some work but the assets are already mostly there. The space and underwater tile sets are underused to a crazy degree, and would be awesome here.

Having a way to modify gear stats, similar to Division, would be a huge relief from the stat waterfall currently in-game.

More content is certainly going to be nice to see. There are only 4 repeatable bosses (Abomination, Taskmaster, a giant spider tank, and a flying airship). MODOK, Super Adaptoid, and Monica are all campaign-only bosses. I wouldn’t say boss fights are a highlight, but it would be cool to have more variety. The whole “we can clone anything” gives a ton of room for this to work. Other mission types would be great too, Tachyon Rift is a nice change of pace.

The group content is going to need some big thinking hats to work out. I’m somewhat optimistic here given the extra time they took to deliver the Kate Bishop and the quality delivered. I guess a lot will depend on the AIM Secret Lab stuff and where that goes. If it works, then hopefully that gives incentive to play with other people. D3, Destiny, Division, Monster Hunter – they are all better with other people. Right now, there’s very little reason to do so here. Better superhero synergy would be one step. Better rewards with humans playing another. Tweaking the death penalties (it shortening Hives) could work. Seems like there are so many GOOD and BAD examples that it’s weird that Avengers took a middle ground path. Feels like this was a single player game with MP bolted on. Lots of good here, just needs a couple more pushes. So far, the pushes all appear to be in the right direction, which is great to see.

Avengers Post Campaign

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I’ve been giving Avengers a fair shake lately. A lot of the parts work well, some things a bit less.

The thing with looter/shooters is that the leveling process is simply an excuse to tell a story. Once you’ve seen that story, the next playthrough is essentially a waiting game until you reach the end game. Some games make that process interesting and varied. Others make it so quick it doesn’t really matter. Avengers does the former, allowing you to do nearly any activity from level 10 to level 50. Some are much better for leveling than others, but the choice is there all the same. A pure grind, you’d likely knock 1-50 in less than 2 hours. Doing it in a more random fashion, double that. I think that’s reasonable.

The gearing portion, that part is a bit off kilter. Your power level (gear score) goes to 150, though for practical purposes, things stop dropping at 130. By the time you do hit 50, your power level is likely to be ~70. I was kinda hoping for that bridge to be smaller, given that you are then faced with the prospects of a pure grind to get those drops. And meaningless ones I should add. All you care about is that the power level is higher, doesn’t matter if it’s half the hit points. When you do reach 130, then gearing has meaning.

I’ll put it plainly, there are simply too many modifiers and combinations. You roll for base stats (melee, range, HP, super powers), then you roll for perks. There are crazy amounts of perks; faster super powers, damage types, power attacks, dodge bonuses, air juggles, gravity attacks, it’s the damn kitchen sink here. Add in item rarity and I’m really finding it too much. I will say that not a single one of the perks is bad, which is a major departure from Anthem. But it could really do with some serious pruning, or the ability to modify rolls from other pieces of gear.

I will say that in the general sense, power level is more important than actual rolls. I’ve got a level 50 Kate Bishop, and she’s at 137 power and rocking a 75/25 mix of ranged damage and HP. Her special powers are fairly meaningless for damage, moreso for control. Her scattershot (multi-arrow) attack does shock damage and that’s really all that matters in that build. She can clear anything, without much of a sweat. Chain stuns will take her down, but they’d take down anyone. Any optimization here would be cool, but of no real purpose. Maybe if they have some sort of timed Harm room runs it would matter?

I’ll have another post regarding the mechanics of the game, but suffice to say that what you see in the campaign is pretty much what you see all the way through. Half the combat is in the wide open, the other half in what are effectively chained dungeons. It works but favors some characters more than others.

Which I guess is the sort of irony here. I have never played a game that so faithfully recreates the superhero fantasy. Sure, there are bullet sponges, and dodging… but the Hulk plays like you’d think the Hulk would play! Thor swings the hammer just like you’d think he would. Ironman is all sarcasm and laser beams. That gives so much more wiggle room for this game to latch on! Any other IP and I’d be irritated by the small things. It is not getting old to have Cap throw his shield against 8 enemies and back to him.

Kamala deserves some mention. On the plus side, her character is extremely well written and acted. Fangirl + scared + wants to help people. Her quips are really great to hear. Mechanically, she’s the elongated man and the best team healer. Her movement feels like a comic book character, and it just works. Her support ability (the only real healer) means that she’s in the team no matter what too.

I’ve got a Tachyon Rift down (a mission with a timer and you lose health over time) and there’s a Mega Hive I have left later, once I have 3 more people at 50 and at 130 gear levels. This will be worthy of it’s own topic.

I do have some concern on the financial model here. It’s entirely cosmetic and the bar set with the Kate Bishop stuff is exceedingly high. The character kit is well thought out, and there’s voice work for every character. And it’s all free. The only way they make money is on cosmetics, and cosmetics are primarily entire player skins. Compare that to pretty much any other game where you customize bits (dyes, parts, etc.) there are limits here.

At some point I’ll do some multiplayer. I’m enjoying the ability to pause a bit too much right now, and the content doesn’t even remotely require it. Maybe the eventual Aim Labs will do that – a real raid would be neat. I’ve more than gotten my $30 out of this game so far, way better value than I had expected.

VGA

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That meant something different when I was younger. But here we’re talking about the Video Game Awards. The thing that Geoff Keighly has somehow managed to both create and monopolize to a degree I didn’t think possible. I’m amazed that the geek/fanboy in him still exists and that corporate culture has not crushed that into a robot mess (Hi Zuck!). That the VGA are able to recognize achievement in a genre that’s often put to the side is great. People put in a lot of time and love into creating these games.

This year went ahead with COVID around, so entirely virtual. Another cool bit is that there are no cable deals here, full stream to everyone. It recognizes that the audience is not 65. Awards interspersed with trailers for upcoming games. Imagine watching the Oscars and you had trailers for new movies? Somehow that works here. Again smart in that attention span stuff, people watch the awards themselves AND get to see new stuff. Their retention must be quite high.

Announcements

Some interesting bits here (Videos in link).

  • Perfect Dark has a sequel, which is neat. I played MORE of that than I did GoldenEye, mostly due to the crazy weapons and decent bot AI. 2 player games were awesome/
  • Dragon Age 4 had a trailer. As per a previous post, I am not bullish on BioWare pulling this off. I don’t get why you think setting has any bearing on this series… people have spent hundreds of hours there. They get it. Halo ads aren’t focused on trees or walls.
  • Sephiroth is going to be in Smash Brothers. I wish I understood fighting game’s fascination with adding weird characters. MK11 is certainly in this boat.
  • There’s a new Mass Effect, which seems to be set just after ME3. I am hopeful they learn that this story has to focus on characters rather than the world, like all good sci-fi does.
  • ARK2 has a voice cast?!? I don’t get it.
  • Back4Blood is from the Left4Dead team, and a modern take on it. This should be neat.
  • Open Roads looks to be an exploration game, sort of in the frame of KR Zero, or Edith Finch. A lot of games try this genre, not many succeed. Fingers crossed here!
  • Returnal seems an interesting mix. Groundhog Day (the Bill Murray flick) is often seen as a psychological horror movie (he’s in the loop for like 100 years), so throw some sci-fi and there ya go!
  • A few games are getting big updates (or sequels, like meatboy 2) in the next few weeks!

So nothing terribly earth shattering in this space, in particular in the AAA space. We knew they were being worked on, either officially or not. None of them have timeframes.

Awards

Last of Us Part 2 won game of the year, which is less important to me than the list of candidates. Hades, Ghost of Tsushima are also on the list and NOT sequels.

The other categories are filled with sequels. Doom, Animal Crossing, FF7 remake, Half-life, Ori, Resident Evil. All amazing games, and when you have the IP down pat, then you can focus on polish. There are 3 PS exclusives (Last of Us, Ghosts of Tsushima and Miles Morales), which continues the trend of quality from that shop. If ever there was a motivation for XBOX to buy dev shops, this should be a clear indicator.

I love how a 20 year old remake (THPS 1+2) won. How messed up is the sports genre that this happened? Among Us won 2 categories, even though it launched in June 2018. And somehow Halo Infinite was on the list for most anticipated… considering it was supposed to launch a month ago, that’s odd. Could almost make a joke about Cyberpunk here…

Solid shout outs to the smaller games, like Kentucky Route Zero, Spiritfarer, Tell Me Why… These games rarely get much exposure (well… KRZ certainly is on a bunch of must play lists) and they can be a challenge to find. Steam’s content quality issues (9,400 games launched so far this year!) make is all but impossible for a person to sort through, making everyone reliant on curators. The VGA are able to highlight some diamonds in the mess of muck out there.

All told, a good event that recognizes some very hard working individuals to get stuff in front of our eyeballs, and engage us for hours, if not days. While I’d love to see less AAA on these lists and more indie games here, that’s an industry growth issue.

And if my dozens of posts on the subject were not enough, then knowing that Hades had multiple nominations and wins should scream – GO PLAY IT!