Category Archives: Uncategorized

Spring Cleaning

Posted on by

Good news, the new laptop is in.  Just shy of 5 weeks from when I ordered it, which still astounds me for 2015.  Same brand as last time (Sager) so it looks very similar, though noticeably lighter.  Mind you, gaming laptops are anything but light.  Win 8.1 came with and if not for that x.1 item I would have installed Win7 instead.  It’s a serviceable OS.  The setup was remarkably quick too.  And this from the guy who remembers installing Win 3.1 and has been custom building rig since the early 90s.  Anyone remember the install time for Win 98 or XP?  You could spend hours just to get access to the internet, then the patches would take up an entire day.  Now the long part is reinstalling the core services.  Right now that’s Chrome (IE is somehow worse in W8 than 7), Steam, Marvel Heroes and the Blizzard launcher.  I’ll get the rest of the apps back on in due time, though it’s going to take ~150gig or so through the pipe to get there.

A funny story.  I have a particular background that I’ve been using on my PCs for a few years, one particular of my daughter.  I wanted to use it again and went to my backup storage and couldn’t find it, even though I had spent a day or so backing up the old rig.  Turns out I missed some files and this generated an opportunity to clean up some video/pictures I had kept for 5 years.  About 100 gigs worth actually, nearly 1000 pictures and 500 videos.  I am a bad curator but took the time to label/categorize what I could.  Now the better half will do the necessary triage and we’ll back up the backup.

I’m not a big picture fan, more of a store it in my head kind of guy.  That said, going through these things was a nice trip down memory lane.  Sometimes I lose focus on priorities with work asking for a bit too much and these sort of events really help to remind me of what I’m really working for.

Stress Relief

I’ve mentioned in the past how gaming is a massive stress relief for me.  It provides me with a challenge and I input a solution to reach a goal.  I think I get more fun out of planning the solution than I do of executing it, outside of the actual endorphins for goal completion.  A tablet is an OK gaming device but the game selection is lacking compared to the PC, as are the interface options.  So yeah, PC gaming is scratching a heck of an itch.

Physical activity, in particular hockey, is my other stress relief.  I play less in the summer, once a week instead of 3, so I need to supplement that somewhat.  Back into the home gym for a few weeks now, something I haven’t been able to truly get a grasp on since my first daughter was born 5 years ago.  Oh, spurts here and there but nothing long lasting.  I’m about 6 weeks in now and I sleep better, which is great.  Then all the other health benefits, the use of a new notch on the belt and if this keeps up, I’ll need to take in some of my clothes.

The month of May has been an interesting one.  Feels like I’m getting out of an old rut and into a new stride.  Spring cleaning I guess.

Player vs Class

Posted on by

I think it says something about Blizz that an ex-dev provides more design feedback than the current crop, at least in terms of overall design intent.  I think the current crop of designers are a little too much in the weeds, personally.   It’s good to take a step back and think about the big picture and how all the pieces fit together.  It’s sort of like walking.  If you spend your time watching your feet rather than where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.

I like reading the various tweets and blue responses about bugs and balance.  That Alchemical Catalysts have next to no use and are a limited to a daily cooldown sure is a head scratcher but to hear a dev say that they agree and need to look into it is disconcerting.

Usually when people design they take a top down approach.  Vision, concept, logic, physical.  More and more detail as you go down.  Then you have someone at each level making sure that each of those individual pockets is lined up with the other ones.  So the person in charge of professions for example, would be responsible that all the professions work similarly and provide some value.  Thematically they should be the same, gather materials, combine materials for effect, use result.  When the combination portion isn’t aligned, where some materials should have value but in fact don’t, then you have a profession with an issue.

I’m not saying it’s easy.  Actually, I’m saying the complete opposite.  I see it all the time.  Developers become incredibly insular to their environment, in particular during crunch time.  All you end up seeing is the trees and not the forest. The leads need to be strong.

And this again falls into more real world examples.  In many organizations, people get promoted to lead because they are a good programmer or developer, or they have experience.  You know what that makes you?  A senior developer, not a leader.  A lead needs to see the big picture and put the pieces together.  They need to match strengths and weaknesses across their team.  In a field like IT, which is heavily populated by people with somewhat limited social skills, these people are rare as all heck.  I think I’d be lucky to find 1 in 100.

And the problem gets worse the more people you have.  A small team can have informal talks and people are tasked with all sorts of work.  A really big project, you might have a guy that only does the RNG system, or a girl that just does terrain.  (Side note: it looks to me like the person who did Nagrand terrain in WoD forgot that Nagrand in BC had flying, then remembered at the end and put in gliders).

But back to the original discussion…

The main question to Greg was about remorse for diluting diversity and complexity to enable more inclusion (a little paraphrased).  And that he doesn’t have a yay/nay answer to me is a good thing.  As long as hybrids think they need to be on par with pure classes, you can’t have specialization.  While you can try to blame the devs in WotLK, you should also point the finger at the devs in BC.  There was a serious point in the expansion where raids were tuned for leatherworking drums and 3+ shamans per team.  If you even considered taking a balanced raid into Sunwell, you were going to have a bad time.

I’m not saying the thought process was wrong; “bring the player and not the class” portion makes sense.  Everyone should bring something but not everyone should bring the same thing.  Tuning and balance would be harder, in order to make more combinations viable.  I think, in the way that Blizzard typically does this, that the pendulum swung a little too far in one direction and that they’ve been unable to get it back since.  If anything, the advent of the DK (and remember, for most of WotLK it was super OP) set an expectation that hybrids were the way forward and that a player should be able to be self-sufficient.  That idea has gotten progressively larger, where in WoD and garrisons, it’s pretty much everywhere.

It’s actually interesting comparing to other themeparks to see how they approach this.  SWTOR is very similar, with massive skill bloat and until Revan, hybrids were amazeballs.  I never quite got those that were “pure DPS” but it was certainly an option.  Everyone has a stun, an interrupt, an AE, a heal and so on… RIFT is based on the concept of hybrids and while there’s always a flavor of the month, there’s a decent balance across all classes.  With only 4 classes, it’s hard to be pigeonholed.  Wildstar and ESO allow you to take a class of sorts, then have a wide array of skills but only a limited amount active at any time.  Maybe you need 2 stuns here and none there.  Hard to balance the skills against each other (ESO in particular had this issue) but the system gives the players tools.

FF14 is a bit different.  It’s a bit like RIFT in that you have many roles (through the classes) but you actively need to level each one on a character.  And at any given time, you are limited in the skills available – like 8-10 total.  Not everyone has a stun and each class tends to bring something rather unique to the game.  I’m curious to see how this lasts long term, what with new classes being added at a rather regular pace but since it’s always the same character, it’s not the world to swap between classes, in particular if they share the same base stats (and therefore gear).  You don’t need an alt.

Most games today are all hybrid but limit the skills available at any given time.  So you can bring the player AND you can bring the class.

SWTOR – Yavin 4

Posted on by

I finished up the quest content for Rishi and Yavin now, and I hit 60 just at the tail end.  Once you “complete” the main storyline, a few dailies open up that need to be taken down to unlock the final battle.  Spoilers but not spoilers, you get a prelude to fighting Revan and it’s pretty sweet.  Harder than I had expected as well and my gear was pretty friggin’ good.  I can imagine how hard that fight would be if I was 2 levels lower, as many people who didn’t do the prelude portion are surely at.

A few things from the entire leveling process.  First, the story had some highs and lows.  The new NPCs are solid enough, with some ties back to Marr and Saetele.  It was well linked together and Revan as a bad guy, is a solid thought.  The Rishi storyline was a little odd, in that I was fighting these little peons compared to the actual revanites.  It’s kind of like asking Vader to take care of some Jawas… didn’t make much sense.  Yavin was straightfoward, an assault on the Revanite forces.  But the zone itself is the centre piece of all Star Wars fiction in the public eye.  I mean, they count years in BBY (before the battle of Yavin), so you’d think this would be a big deal.  Instead we get 2 jungle sets and 2 temple sets.  Maybe more will come later.

It's the best shot you're going to get of Yavin

It’s the best shot you’re going to get of Yavin

The combat changes are pretty welcome.  Everyone seems to be more mobile, which works well with the added telegraphs.  Timing is a little off mind you but it’s workable.  The power curve seems rather in the player’s favor as I didn’t die once (Makeb was a bad time overall) and even the gold NPCs weren’t any hassle.  Champs could be taken with a little thought.  It’s an odd shift which makes for much faster gameplay.  Very WoW, and that doesn’t fit so well for my tastes.

I will say that I like the discipline system.  It makes it easier for the devs to balance (WoW had nothing on SWTOR hybrids) and makes it easier to swap between specs.  The utilities barely grant any powers so it’s hard to make a bad choice, which is a nice switch from WoW’s super-obvious-which-talents-to-pick style.

The art is good, minus the pirate hats.  I rather enjoyed the new sets and to see the style grow over the years.

Now that I’m 60 I think I’m going to finish off some things I’ve always wanted to do.  Pretty up the stronghold, max out companion favor, get Legacy 40 and unlock Treek, get HK-51 (which should be soloable now).  Maybe run a few operations in Story mode as well.  Going to be fun.

Wildstar & WoW – Odd News

Posted on by

So in Wildstar news, apparently Stephen Frost is moving on to other pastures.  I’m trying to think of anyone of the devs that are left since launch…and I’m drawing blanks.  It’s getting to a point where it just looks like the culture at Carbine isn’t enough to keep the lights on.  Smart decisions need to be taken, or should have been taken many months ago and poof, nothing but people quitting.  I’m sure this has resonated with the community.  It really is quite a shift and I’m having a ton of trouble putting a finger on why.

Lots of conjecture mind you, but wow, I think this is one for the record books.  There’s certainly still some hope that the game can come back if it makes the changes at a decent pace.  SWTOR certainly showed that, and the flaws were very similar (remember a 90% server consolidation?).

In WoW news, the Brawler’s Guild is getting a re-vamp.  Or is it?  Let’s look at it

  • No new bosses
  • Change in the boss order/ranks
  • No new achievements
  • No new rewards
  • No new challenge cards

And this merited a blog post?  I tried the Brawler’s Guild.  It was fun.  Except Hexos, which never made any sense.  Now the only difference is a re-shuffle of the bosses?  I’m going to be honest here, I can’t see anything that WoW is bringing to the plate in WoD that would be considered progress or new.  Sure, there’s a stat squish (2 years late) and a normalization of raid sizes (flex everything!) and the world’s shittiest housing implementation (garrisons).  It’s stuff that could have been included in 2 content patches.  And people have waited over 13 months since SoO (5.4) went out the door for this?

#Wildstar – Class Design Interview

Posted on by

Oddly enough, TenTonHammer is one of my go-to places for Wildstar news.  Massively’s staff cuts have cut that bugger off my reading list.  Recently, TTH had the chance to interview the lead class designer, as well as the Medic and Esper leads.  There are three main things I get from this interview.

  1. Carbine is being rather forthright and honest about their design intentions.
  2. There are fundamental issues with balance that need to be sorted before they look at skills
  3. TTH’s interview skills are “unique”

For 1, this is somewhat novel to me. I know Blizzard is seen as open about their design intents but that took 4 years to start. And the tenure/legacy of GC is always a debated topic. Compared to other MMOs mind you, ESO, TSW, FF14, SWTOR and RIFT, this is a drastically different approach. Now the flipside to honesty is that people are going to dissect every word. A 2 month lock on class design before launch may seem crazy to some but from my experience, that’s a rather short lock on release windows outside of bug fixes. Plus, if you look at the patch notes WS puts out, Carbine is putting a ridiculous amount of effort in fixing their game.

For 2, this is disconcerting while at the same time NORMAL. When you build operational models, you use normalized data. So assume everyone is at the same power level, and what do you get – that’s the baseline of testing. Sure, you can test some outliers but core builds are based around design principles you need to adhere. And as with all massively multiplayer games, people will find optimizations that the developers did not consider. Absolute scaling is tough to predict.

If you play WS, you’ll notice that the tank players have lower Assault Power compared to the healing players, assuming the same item level. It’s rather drastic actually, where a level 30 tank weapon as 200 AP and a level 30 healing weapon has 350 AP. Now, for a level 30 tank and healer to have parity, it means that damage has to scale differently between the classes.   Let’s say they each need 1000 power. A tank would scale at 5 power / AP and a healer would scale a 2.85 power /AP. Good so far?

Well once you reach max level and start optimizing, those options are class agnostic. While your equipment may be optimized for tanks (lower stats, better scaling) runes and imbuements are not. A 50 AP rune can be used by anyone. So what you have is players stacking AP runes (and imbuements) in parallel with healing classes, but they scale at a much better rate, giving them a very aggressive power curve.

There are a few fixes for this but it’s really a core design flaw that needs to be addressed. Either you change base scaling of the class, or you apply the scale to all stat inputs. And that’s aside from skill/AMP balancing.

Skill/AMP balancing is an interesting topic since Carbine can clearly analyze existing patterns. Some classes have decent diversity, others less so – Espers in particular, with only 2 skills per role that matter. Nice to see they’re trying to fix that.

Finally for 3, TTH’s rather aggressive and subjective interview style comes off as being childish. Or perhaps extremely passionate about the topic rather than objective. There were no softballs in the interview – again, a significant difference when compared to Massively. It’s fresh but at the same time dangerous.

Overall, I’m happy with the interview. The lead designer is clearly a lead (correcting a class designer in an interview is rare) and the class designers have a solid plan to resolve issues they freely admit exist. And if we follow the current patch timeline, most of the changes should be in September/October, which is a very acceptable timeframe for a big rebalance. WoW didn’t touch Rogues at all until BC, if you recall. It’s encouraging to see that type of attitude.

Neverwinter – Devoted Cleric at 60

Posted on by

Apparently, I’m still near the top of the Google index for Neverwinter search terms I wanted to add a couple more posts on the game.

Getting to 60

There really isn’t much strategy here.  Follow the sparkle path in each zone.  Do your incantation every hour (ctrl-I) for buffs and experience.  Take Leadership as your Profession and focus on maximum XP per hour per task.  Try to get some Astral Diamond rewards too, that way you can upgrade your minions through the AH rather than wait 18 hours multiple times.  Make sure you do the Neverwinter Graveyard (I think that’s it) as the final quest (Clockwork Tower) gives you your final free bag.  You can’t miss the one before that.  Also take the Artifact quest in the mid-teens, it’s a stat boost.  Do run skirmishes during the bonus hour, the queue times are super short.  Don’t run dungeons.  Do run the Foundry during the bonus hour.  Slot +exp enhancements.  Don’t do any of the above if you want to “experience the game”.

My DC did everything by the book, saw every skirmish and dungeon along the way and I had a ton of fun.  My Guardian Fighter did the first 2 zones and has been leveling through incantations and professions since, and is 42.

At 60 – Gearing

The first thing once you hit 60 is to head over the the auction house.  Search for rare (purple) level 60 equipment.  Try to get a set bonus, doesn’t matter much which for now.  Use level 4 enhancements and slot a 2:1 ratio of Power/Crit across the equipment.  Utility is +movement.  Defense is +defense.  Slot your companion with level 4 enhancements that give you a stat boost from their stats (6% each I think) and give them blue-level gear.  Use all the enhancements you’ve acquired from leveling to refine your offensive enhancements to level 5.  Once all are at 5, work on getting them to 6.  Weapon enchants can wait.  Refine your artifact to level 29 but don’t upgrade.  With everything at level 4 your gear score will be around 9000.  Level 5 plus a boosted artifact will have you above 10,000 gear score, eligible for 99% of all content.

Now you can worry about getting gear improvements through dungeons and raids.  Try to aim for 3000 power, 2000 crit, 2500 recovery, hopefully in that order.  Defense is useful, as is movement.  Lifesteal, to me, is superior to regeneration based on skill usage.

At 60 – Skill Set

I will make this somewhat generic as through play you’ll likely find more options.

Dailies: Hallowed Ground and Flamestrike

Hallowed Ground is great for group play, heals for a chunk and has a great boost for players.  There really isn’t a better option that I’ve seen.  Not as useful for solo play.  Flamestrike is for when you need to deal damage/knockdown, pretty much any non-boss encounter.  “Saving” dailies is rarely useful.

At Will: Sacred Flame / Astral Seal or Lance of Faith / Brand of the Sun

Sacred Flame and Astral Seal are the group based at wills.  They don’t do any damage but do provide some hit points to the team.  Astral Seal should always be up on the boss.  Lance of Faith and Brand of the Sun are solo skills.  The latter does ~75% damage to a normal enemy at 60, so I tag everyone.

Encounter: Sunburst, Astral Shield, Forgemaster’s Flame or Daunting Light

Divine Power is needed for most of these.  Sunburst gives you breathing room and a small heal.  Astral Shield gives a buff plus healing if you use DP.  Forgemaster’s Flame with DP heals nearby targets, which is oddly super powerful.  Daunting Light I use in solo play as it will kill 3-4 normal enemies in a single shot.  Great for bosses who summon friends.  Plus, no need for DP.

Some people will use Bastion of Health but that requires aiming, which is pretty hard to do consistently.  Healing Breath doesn’t get you much further as the regen is offset by damage.

Passives: Healer’s Lore and Foresight

Healer’s Lore is a decent boost for healing power and Foresight gives a defense boost to everyone.  Divine Fortune is an option if you find yourself DP starved.

Feats:

This is my selection.  You can move stuff around if you like but it works for me.

neverwinterdc-feats

At 60, Targetting

The biggest challenge in any action-rpg is aiming.  Wildstar is going to have the same problem.  Neverwinter doesn’t have fixed targets, everything is soft lock or aimed on the ground.  Soft-lock attacks, mostly the at-will skills, will require you to move to avoid hitting something else in front of it, due to line-of-sight.  As most bosses are taller, you can always aim up too.  Ground aiming is a bit tougher.  For buffs, I aim the center of the buff slightly behind the tank, unless I have people attacking the rear of the boss, then I move it around 180 degrees.  For damage attacks, I use the edge of the area on my primary target as hit boxes are pretty darn big.  This means you hit the big bad guy + a couple minions.  This takes a ton of practice to do while running around.  The good news is, that if you’re aiming and hitting an at-will attack, the AE attack will auto-center on your target.

The other thing to worry about is threat.  There’s no easy answer here, as threat is a weird beast in Neverwinter.  You don’t want to land a huge heal at the start. You’ll never be able to keep everyone at 100%.  In fact, the only person you should be directly healing is the tank, everyone else will be hit by AE effects or your at-wills.  Knowing where to place AE heals so that you can stand close enough to heal but far enough to not get hit is through practice.

Lastly, running away is a valid tactic.  As the game is heavily based on timers, a second or two of running away is likely going to save you.  HoTs and AE heals will work while running away.

Your best bet is to run a few skirmishes to get a hold on how to triage healing and aim.  Then when you have a solid feeling, move to dungeons.  They are more complex due to walls and corners and bosses with tons of adds but you should have enough basics down to move forward.  And don’t be afraid to take a lower level dungeon to practice.

The good news is that as we’re the only healing class, there’s a massive demand.  Yay.

 

ESO – Update level 16

Posted on by

Coming from a gamer who typically hits max level in week 2 of a launch, my progress vertically has been stunted. That’s a good thing.

Rohan, back after hiatus, has a similar outlook on the game as I do. It’s an interesting game that’s hard to classify. Not exceptional but curious, which may be enough. It’s enough for TSW right?

Anyways, my goal in ESO right now is map completion. The compass indicated black/hollow icons if I get close enough and I can’t stand it. Caves/tombs have skyshards, quests and rare enemies that aren’t on the map. I could care less about my level, my skill points or my gear. I want that icon to change color.

Perspective now. Almost all themeparks are about the big ride at the end. You take kiddie rides, stand in line and see the window dressing but you have a goal and it’s a finish line. That goal does not exist here. ZOS has pretty much flat out said there is none of that.

Without an end game, people have a single choice at max level – PvP. SWTOR was identical but the content GETTING to max level was pretty bad.

I put my name reservation alts to the side for now. A future test will be to play a quest+skyshard leveling path with one of those alts. From what I see on the interweb, they are going through it about 5x faster than me. Anyone who is max level today has likely missed the point of the game.

I’m On A Boat

Posted on by

Well, at this size it’s a ship. Taking a cruise in the Carribean with the wife and no kids.

I need a massive break from work. Too much time there and the candle is fully burnt.

This’ll be great.   See you on the other side.

Gone for a week

Power Gains

Posted on by

Clearly, I play a lot of games.  I also have a passion for numbers.  Makes for a rather OCD compulsion to maximize output.  I don’t mind, I get pleasure from it.  I used to write guides (the last one was for Marvel Heroes) and that’s paid for this hobby.  What I find as an odd pattern is the oddly non-linear power gains.

Let’s take a step back for a bit.  Older games had no power gains, what you started with was pretty much what you ended up with.  Mario doesn’t get stronger in Zone 8, you just get better at playing with him.  The proliferation of RPGs since then, combined with faster processing power to compute those numbers, means that nearly no game today will release without some power increase over time.

I like the Batman series as the power gains are % based and somewhat linear.  Sure, you might get a bit stronger, say double from the start, but that really doesn’t have a huge impact.  You are exceptionally better at stringing combos and avoiding damage by the time the power unlocks are available, so you really don’t notice all that much.

MMORPGs are different.  You start off dealing say, 10 damage.  It’s a rather linear gain from that point until max level, which we’ll put at 100 damage.  This is base damage, linked to level.  Then we need to factor in your equipment.  Well designed games have gear that increases your output by a noticeable but still marginal increase.  This way, as you gain power at max level, through gear, you’re not turning into some robot god of immortality where all the previous content is irrelevant.

WoW’s power gains are an extreme example.  One piece of gear in MoP is better than some characters had as TOTALs in Lich King.  The numeric increases are so large, that they offset any base level (acquired from just plain leveling) gains.  The item squish coming in WoD is going to try to fix this.  I personally think this is a good thing, as the game will return to a skill-based one rather than a simple numbers game.

I’m watching streams of a space beta, recollecting my time in another beta and trying to come to terms with which one, from a playstyle perspective, seems more prone to a skill-based system rather than a numeric one.  I like skill.  I think gear has it’s place, as a reward for skill, in that once you acquire it, you need to concentrate less on details more on delivery.  It doesn’t make content trivial, or rather should not.  It just takes a bit of the edge off.

I’d like to see a return to brain power, instead of CPU power.  I think we’re ready.

Quick Things

Posted on by

Computer capped out, trying hard to get it fixed. Everything is on mobile while commuting. Should be done by end of weekend. You forgot how much crap you accumulate until it’s gone.

I think the following article is an excellent proof that game design today is done wrong. Square announced 2013 finally put Lara Croft in the black.

Think about that a second. A game that sells 4 million+ units barely turned a profit. What kind of budget are these games working with? How can you possibly use a new IP with that kind of budget?

How can the game medium move forward if games can only be successful if they sell 5 million copies. How many games a year sell more than 1 million? 

Just boggles the mind.