It’s So Quiet…

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This weekend was the first in some time where we didn’t have some engagement, so it was quite relaxing.  Still had some errands to do, but there’s certainly something to be said about enjoying the simple things.  The slight blip to our bliss was an unexpected offer to purchase a cottage.  My wife and I are cottage people, so by ancient rites, our children must be as well, or be cast out forever.  We knew the offer was in the works but not for a few more years.  After crunching some numbers, it looks like it’s workable today and will slack off in a couple years.  I get quite antsy when it comes to finance, and it’s not like you buy real estate on regular basis.

Oh, and Star Wars.  If you didn’t have a chance to watch the recent trailer because that cave-in kept you busy, here you go:

A few notes about the trailer:

  • Contrary to most trailers, there’s no plot given away
  • I have no idea what relation exists between the characters as there’s next to no dialogue
  • I dislike JJ’s scores but this one is Williams 100%. The tugs.
  • Han and Leia deliver some awesome lines. You realize that the characters in this movie know less about Star Wars than the audience.
  • Only 1 lens flare (red lasers)! Lots of saturation though
  • Fingers crossed on no stupid steamy sexy scenes that are jammed in for no reason. (Super 8 the exception to the JJ rule)
  • $50 bet that Chewie dies. Too bad cause he’s badass in the EU (though still dead there too).

Bang, Bang, Flop

I’ve been playing my Esper a fair chunk lately, focusing almost entirely on the Quiet Downs instance.  I think I can do it blindfolded now, with an average run time of 13:30 for gold.  I’m sitting on slightly over 2000 currency, and already have the hoverboard mount.  Not so lucky in the costume drops though…  I’ve re-runed a few things, knowing that some pieces of gear will never be updated unless I start raiding.  Quite a difference to be honest, giving me a fair chunk more power and survivability. It’s had an impact on my plat making mind you, since Quiet Downs provides no loot, outside of a bag with mostly decorations inside.  Stretching a little thing on that class, I decided to get back to my Engineer tank.

First to note, he has 5 pieces at ilvl90, so arguably better than the Esper, if you ignore the crap gear in the other slots.  Both are holding great weapons, so that certainly helps.  I’ve runed him for damage and it’s been ok so far.  His output is certainly higher than the Esper’s but his survival is in the pits.  Engineer’s are the only class that cannot self heal (outside of a T8 skill), which makes some content surprisingly difficult.

Expeditions with my Esper are usually cake walks.  Gauntlet is a good example, in particular the middle portion where you need to avoid exploding rats.  I can put on a passive heal that allows me to make mistakes during that 90s portion.  The engineer has to take that T8 skill PDU, that heals for around 4000 damage every 30 seconds.  The hits taken are between 5000 and 6000, so not exactly useful.  I missed completing Fragment Zero on gold due to 2 deaths due to combat sessions that lasted 2 minutes, since the entire zone is littered with tiny critters (quite a litteral Zerg fest).

Typical solo work isn’t bad.  The damage output is good, the defenses aren’t crippling.  The issue as I see it is that with my current ilvl, I’m just at the edge of reasonable.  I can’t see how a fresh 50 would have fun, when compared to other classes’ solo-viability. I know that giving Engineer’s a self-heal would homogenize the classes, but it would also increase the “fun” aspect of the class at lower ilevels.  And let’s be clear, a support-specced Engineer is a beast.  They hit like a mouse but take it on the chin like a champ.

So I think that’s where I’m going to end up, turning this Engineer into a tank-only monster for group content.  It’ll be a pretty big hit to his solo-ability but it’ll be a different content package than my Esper is running, which should help avoid any burnout.

MMO Gaming Gluttony

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Free health care, one of the best things about being a Canadian (they give you free maple syrup, dontchaknow).  I cut open my elbow playing hockey the other night (bunch of hosers) and after 2 days, my wife had enough of looking at it and sent me to the clinic.  Cold season is in full swing up here, lasting the traditional 11.5 months of the year, so the office was slam packed.  I put my name in the hat, got called 2.5 hours later, with a dead cell phone no less, and after less than 10 minutes of consultation, they gave me a prescription for anti-biotics.

So, the good part of this is that the doctor who saw me was upbeat after a clearly grueling day.  I guess you have to be in order to not go over the deep end…Anyhow, she looked at my elbow, made funny faces, insulted my hockey abilities (touché), googled (or webMD, who knows) the exact dosage needed and agreed I should take care of it.  She also politely explained how the pills can bring on diarrhea and I should stay away from white pants.  Noted.  Perhaps I’m just lucky in that regard but I’m batting near 50% in the serious/clown doctor business.  It doesn’t make the wait any less annoying, but you leave with a smile, so there’s that.

Well, that and not having a $1,000 bill helps too.

Options

The October/November time of the year is like Christmas for gamers.  Back when consoles were the king of the hill, you’d have near half of the games released in that part of the year – enough to get people going crazy just before Black Friday.  Now with the interwebs and Steam sales, it’s certainly less impactful but still noticeable.

There are MMO expansions afoot.  Wildstar is my drug of choice currently, but SWTOR’s early access for their expansion is out.  GW2’s expansion is this week if I recall, Overwatch Beta next week, Devilian closed beta, FF14’s patch 3.1 is soon, Neverwinter had one a few weeks back, EQ2 has a ToT expansion… just tons of options.  Consoles too mind you, with Assassin’s Creed 72 (Syndicate) coming out and Fallout 4 in a couple weeks.

I still play Black Flag from time to time, for the pirate ships.  I’m rather done with the “follow him for 5 minutes, get caught once and start all over” gameplay.  Funny how Ubisoft has taken up EA’s old mantle of worst company in the world.  I guess people need someone to dislike.

I know Bethesda, so I know Fallout 4 on release is going to be a buggy mess combined with tons of joy.  I think I’m going to wait a few weeks after release to pick it up, enough for a kitchen sink patch to be deployed. (It’s a sad statement of the gaming world, where the above previous statement can be applied to 90% of games.)

So for now, it’s Wildstar or bust.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll dip my toes back into SWTOR once the general release of KotFE comes out.  Who can say no to lightsabers?

Cash Stops Can Be Confusing

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Conversions of business models seem to be a complicated matter.  SWTORs hot bars, EQ2’s well, everything, LOTROs descent into madness – all show that it’s a hard thing to figure out how to make a buck.  I’ll give Rift and TSW a thumb’s up mind you, those were pretty good at the start.  Wildstar, while probably one of the most forgiving F2P games out there, is a true headscratcher in terms of trying to make money.  The devs are learning though, so that’s good – the Shade’s Eve fabkit is no longer single use, flair is dropping in game, so there’s some progress.

Aside from costumes, items in the cash stop are nearly all single use, single character – mounts, pets, consumables and service tokens (I’ll get to these in a minute).  I don’t mind that so much, since you want repeat purchases.  What I do mind is the price point against repeat purchases.  See, Wildstar allows you to create a lot of alts.  I think my account, since I bought a box a while back, allows for 14 characters.  Mounts and pets don’t cross the character line, so if I want the same mount I need to buy it multiple times.  At $15-$20 a purchase, I don’t see how this makes any lick of sense.  I’d gladly pay it for the entire account, for sure!  A month’s subscription cost for a mount ain’t a bad deal at all.  There are plenty of posts on reddit and on the official forums about this topic alone, I’d expect some movement eventually.  I’m in a pickle mind you, since there are limited time mounts (for Shade’s Eve and zPrix) that will go poof soon, and they are neato.

Service tokens are the solution to the game’s gold sink.  Sure, they let you teleport a 2nd time across the world but aside from leveling, I don’t know anyone who would actually use them for that purpose.   They are really meant to bypass RNGsus when re-rolling runes.  When that starts costing a plat or so per re-roll, service tokens are looking pretty tempting.  They are decently priced but nearly directly tied to power increases.  For at most 35 tokens, you can get the best rune slot setup possible, with a further max of 5 for every new piece of gear.  You still need the runes to insert, and those can’t be bought from the store, so there’s some fancy wall there.

The game also has a variant on lockboxes, with some fortune coins to gamble with.  There is so little push on this, I’m curious if people are even aware that it exists.  It’s quite different that other F2P games.

The real kicker for me though is the subscription option.  There are benefits, sure, but they are so weak I don’t see why anyone would be subbed more than a month.  Getting MORE rep or cash/credits just means you hit the cap faster.  I hit the elder gem and omnibits cap weekly already, so there isn’t exactly an incentive there.  For those that don’t, even that isn’t really motivating.  You don’t get a discount in the shop, you don’t get any NCoin either.  You actually seem to get more benefit from buying directly from the shop, in terms of that progress bar at the top, than you do from subscribing.  So, I’m not quite sure why it’s even an option.  I’d be curious as to what the beancounters are saying though.

EDIT: Syp has a post similar in tone.

I’m kinda hoping they tweak it a bit more, because the stuff in that store is making me feel like

frymoney

zPrix

Yesterday’s patch added the zPrix event to the game.  It’s a set of 3 hoverboard races, with 4 options for rewards each.  There’s also a hoverboard mount in the store (with the above issues) and it looks super cool.  That’s right, super.  The races themselves come with a teleport button to the starting line.  Each one is just around a minute, minute-and-a-half long.  You win by finishing, not by getting an amazing time.  Rewards are a title, costume pieces and housing items.  I ran all 3 on 2 characters, so the costume is fully unlocked and I have a burning wall of fire on my housing plot as well.

The races themselves are quite a lot of fun.  Trying them the 2nd time had me looking for shortcuts, or better lines through to make better time.  Quick, easy, fun.  Nothing wrong with that!

The patch also applied some changes to the Quiet Downs instance for Shade’s Eve, or at least did so for me. The starting point is random now, though the map is the same.  (For those struggling to get through the maze in time, the end goal is the ? in the middle of the map.  Just south of that is the graveyard, which is really quite easy to spot from a distance.  In that graveyard are two tombs with a wall at the back – the wall has a fence on top – the goal is behind that fence.  I’ve been unable to jump that fence so I instead take the a different path.  The right most tomb is surrounded by a gate.  One of the corner posts of that gate allows you to jump to the higher wall (east side).  I jump up there, and head north to the end point.  I can clear with about 90 seconds to spare.  Also, you can miss 2 objectives and still get a gold medal for 50 Shades, it that matters to you.)

Jack Shade has also been tweaked.  He has many more attacks, summons jabbits, has pretty nasty AE and is actually a fight I need to move around in now.  I’m hoping this was just me hitting a simple bug, but the previous fights were just DPS runs, with an interrupt every so often.  Every run ends with a loot bag, so I’m stocking up on housing decorations.

Two events at once, both are quite fun.

The Benefits of Gating

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I’ve long said that gearscore is one of the worst methods of determining a player’s value.  It just happens to be the easiest.  Playing in Wildstar after having done a fair chunk of FF14 sure does make you think.

When the family went to the zoo this summer, there was a section that had a height limitation, 48 inches.  My 5 year old was just under that.  She’s a giant (both are) but it still was’t tall enough.  Which is good, since the section had a clear strength requirement as well – I’d guess 7-8 year olds were the target demo.  What kind of test do they use then?  Pull ups and push ups?

Gaming isn’t much different.  Activities require 2 things, in varying amounts – skill and power.  FF14 takes a relaxed approach to this, with a 2.5s global timer in combat.  This slows everything down and the skill bar therefore drops down a lot in turn.  It then turns into a power game, where it’s slightly easier to balance.  FF14’s LFG system has a gear level requirement for some content – in order that you apply some meaningful benefit to random groups.

The question is always, what if I’m 1ilvl below?  Am I really that bad?  No, since in FF14 the gear level is so easily acquired.  You could certainly try the content at a lower level but a tank/healer that’s undergeared is a risk.  DPS… well that can be managed.

WoW has a gearscore requirement, that’s really more of a joke right now.  The only thing it prevents is alts joining top tier LFR 3 patches late.  Gear is like candy in WoW.  WoD forced people to go through proving grounds, which is great.  Probably #2 in my quality of life changes the game has applied after flex raids.

TSW has gear and skills, though only a single gate.  The Gatekeeper battles are what keeps you from top-tier content – ensuring that not only do you have the gear but also the skills and understanding to use them.  A fresh player will have a lot of trouble the first time in, though it does get better.

Wildstar though, that’s a different one.  Combat is extremely hectic, what with telegraphs all over the place.  The skill level is quite high, compared to what players learn while leveling.  What’s the last MMO you played where you needed to stun an enemy?  I mean to complete the content, not to get some sort of achievement.  Where did you need to coordinate interrupts in 5 group content? Most fresh level 50s don’t even have an interrupt slotted.  That means that skill level is super important.  Aside from raid attunement, there’s no content gating aside from level.

Some folks are pushing for an ilvl gate for dungeons.  While PvP gear can get you to ilvl70 for just a few gold, it’s not like ilvl alone allows you to complete content.  People still stand in the red.  People don’t slot runes, or amps, or use a mixture of support and assault gear.  There’s just a whole pack of variables well beyond ilvl that impact play.  And it’s those variables that are causing some frustration in the game today.  People are simply not used to the mechanics and admittedly, they are quite a bit more complicated that other games out on the market.

So my suggestion to Wildstar is the following:

  • A veteran dungeon has a pre-requisite that the Protostar dungeons be completed first
    • This ensures that the player has an understanding of group mechanics
  • A veteran dungeon has an ilvl requirement of 70 and that half the runes have to be filled
    • 70 is actually quite low, PvP gear can be bought at that level.
    • People need to rune their gear.  Not all slots are equal though and to save rerolls, only half need them.  That gives about 7 runes, which is about 1000 stat points or so.
    • Even at this ilvl, it’s should only be Stormtalon to start.
    • This ilvl requires a good amount of skill.

Anecdote quickly.  When my Esper was a fresh 50, I had a really, really hard time with the daily quest hubs, especially the 2man missions (spider queen is a good example).  It required a specific build to complete.  Now, with an ilvl in the mid 80s, it’s actually quite simple.  As if I had an additional 10 levels to the character.  The ilvl power curve in Wildstar is significant.

If the skill level in Wildstar was lower, then the ilvl itself could drop a fair chunk too.  It’s not, and unless there’s some sort of mandatory training (which any veteran player could do with ease), it’s a massive wall of hurt for new players.  The Protostar dungeons are a quick and easy way for people to learn the group mechanics, test out builds and ensure they can do group content.  It would be even better if they could be soloed (like proving grounds and the gatekeeper) in order to save time in a queue.  Keeping people playing is important and continual failure without feedback/practice does the opposite.

Unexpected Change

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Alrighty then.  It would seem I’ve woken up to a new government.  I did my duty and voted last night, bringing the little squirts along.  We were going to “hide behind the boxes” as my youngest put it.  And it would seem that I was not alone.  Canada rarely has large sweeps in office, unless there are mitigating factors – mainly an economy in the toilet.  We have one of the highest GDPs, 7% unemployment and a nomial inflation rate – so all quite good.  We’re not at war, inside or out the country.  Even the governing party was only in a majority for 4 years, finishing off a 9 year term.  No, this was an election that was won on ideals.  It was eerily similar to the Obama campaign.

Our previous PM did a lot of good; got through a recession, cut back on government spending, made significant trade agreements (though not all are ratified). Unfortunately, that office also applied some of the most divisive wedge politics ever seen in our country. If you’re at all familiar with the US style attack ads, those were pretty much non-existent in Canada up until a few years ago.  Most candidates focused on themselves, what they could do.  The party line however… not so much.  There were dozens of new and modified laws that brought us back 50 years in social liberties, many of which were overturned by the Supreme Court.  For all the good that was done, there was always that tinge of horrible right next to it.

It would seem that Canadians as a whole had enough of that.  From 35 seats to 184 is unheard of in our country’s history.  From a distant third to a majority.  Even the other parties who didn’t make out as well (Green and NDP) were happy it was anything but the old guard.  Heck, here’s Paul Dewar’s concession speech, after having lost one of the only seats the NDP thought they had no chance of losing.

“In fact, let’s celebrate tonight, because it’s the end of cynicism, it’s the end of Harper, it’s a joyous occasion,” he added.

It’s abundantly clear that it was less about who to vote for as much as it was “how do we get rid of these folks?”  Now it’s time for the new crew to step up and follow through with their promises.  Fingers crossed.

Shade’s Eve

I ran Wildstar’s event quests last night, and was neatly impressed.  There are some basic quests in town to complete, nothing terribly complex.  Then there’s a Trick or Treat quest that has you visit 8 different housing plots.  That one is neat since it has you see other plots but actually finding plots with the specific candy you need is a major pain (thanks Reddit!).  Plus, you’re not actually tracking the candy, just a %, so that needs a little tweak methinks.

The neato quest is an expedition-like zone called Quiet Downs.  There are 3 parts to it, with varying levels of success.  The first is a maze-like portion where you’re given a flashlight and instructions to find a fountain.  Little critters can come around and knock you out, but you can also outrun them.  You’re timed here, and my first run through I failed this portion.  I personally find this portion of the zone too long, though the suspense portion is cool.  The 2nd part is more an interactive play, with no real impact other than to the story.  The 3rd part is a mini dungeon, similar to the Gauntlet ship layout.  Kill some ooze, baddies and then the big boss.  I will say that Jack Shade looks amazing, and the voice acting is tops.

All those quests give event currency, used to buy housing items, pets, costumes or a hoverboard.  I’m pretty sure I can unlock most everything with daily logins.  There are 2 items in the cash stop, a fabkit for the house (single use) and a mount (single character) that are drawing some ire.  Each is about $20 and since it can only be used once… that’s ticking a lot of people off.  Issue 1 with the fabkit (which admittedly is pretty neat) is that you can’t remove it, or you lose it.  Issue 2 is that you can only use the items once.  Carbine is working on making more things go across the entire account though, so for the meantime I’m just stacking everything on my Esper.  I’ll pick up the mount, since it comes out to being the cost of a monthly sub – plus who doesn’t want to ride a flaming ghost/skeleton warpig?

I like this event because it doesn’t make you run all over the darn world, or force you to do PvP.  It’s contained, it looks good, the story is ok and the prices (outside cash stop) are more than reasonable.

Go Out and Vote

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In this lovely part of the country I call home, last weekend was the weekend for fall colors.  At least in terms of leaves still being on the trees and not in your yard.  The downside to last weekend is that it was bloody cold and we had quite a few snow flurries.  Not exactly pleasing.  Still, from the car it was quite a sight.  And there’s nothing like a cold day that makes you want to stick yourself under a blanket and not move for a year.

Get Out and Vote, Eh

Today is Election Day in Canada, where we vote for our next Space Olympian (Prime Minister).  It was the longest official campaign since the 1880s, though in reality it has nothing to compare to the US preparing 4 years ahead of time.  We have 3 official large parties, 2 small ones (Green and BQ) and then a bunch of fringe ones. Choice is good, though 4 of those options are all left leaning.  Canada is an interesting country, with fiscal conservatives and social liberals, by and large.  Aside from the past 8 years, it’s been a rather centrist country, without too many wild swings in either direction.

This campaign hasn’t been much fun, with a rather ridiculous amount of vitriol and rhetoric going around.  Apparently I have to worry about brothels popping up next to my house if I vote a certain way.  I’m really curious as to who actually believes that’s a possibility – and then shake their hand.  As with many large countries, we use a first-past-the-post electorate system.  The main flaw with that system is that over time it reduces options to just 2 (as occurred in the US) – which generally means much wider swings from one party to the next.  There are better systems out there…but they cost more money.  Who knows where we’ll end up.

All that to say that I’m voting today.  Every able Canadian should vote.  People have died for that privilege.  It’s a duty I’ll be certain to instill in my children because every single vote counts.

Wildstar

This weekend was double PvP currency weekend.  I’m clearly not the intended audience, as PvP as a whole turns me off quite a bit – stat based PvP even more so.  Still, I gave it a few runs since the queues were instant.  I played once as a DPS and the rest of the time as a healer.  Context though, I’ve healed in PvE content.  The gear isn’t the best, only around ilvl 80, but it gets the job done.  With one exception, I was outhealed by a factor of 2:1.  On a PvP bonus weekend, that’s not a big deal to me.  It does however, pretty much ensure that I won’t be PvPing in the future as it’s a stat wall I have no intention of climbing.  The maps are neat, and the objectives short enough but it still doesn’t scratch any itch that I have.

I’ve been reading on the Wildstar economy, primarily from the Reddit forum.  Either Entity is immune to pricing fluctuations or I am missing a 0 on some item prices.  I find it absolutely hilarious to see people posting about making #plat on rune fragments when they haven’t sold for over a gold in a long time.  I’ve been back about 2 weeks, I’ve made about 30 plat so far, which was ok enough.  I’ve put my foot back into the flipping business, with moderate results.  I’m sure I could park a mule there and just flip like crazy but that’s not much fun is it?  I do know that it costs about 100p to unlock all the ability/amp slots if I bought them on the AH, but since there are other paths, I’ll try that out instead.

Final note, I haven’t really found any big limitations being a F2P player who had a box copy – or at least, not enough to motivate me to become a signature member. I appreciate not being nickel and dimed or get spammed (NW I’m looking at you) for sure, but at the same time, I’m curious as to where I should spend my money.  TSW, Marvel Heroes and Path of Exile had ways for me to drop coin.  I guess the store is just a little too young at the moment.  There are a lot of people playing, word of mouth is great, so hopefully that translates into some forward movement on income.

WoW – Numbers and Trends

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Alt-Chat has a neat post that triggered a thought.  Then it had me dig a bit deeper around the data analysis of the game.

Let’s start with the following MMO-Champ post on garrison achievements.  I think it would be fair to say that raiders have top level garrisons.  Maybe not so much that they have invested in the monument achievements exactly, but it’s certainly a barometer. That half the current playerbase has hit 100,000 apexis crystals isn’t really that tough to believe.  We’re nearing the 1 year mark and those things drop everywhere.  Epic crafting is also pretty simple, gated only by time.  Legendary ring at 18%, you’d kind of hope it was higher – but it’s not too far from the “complete all normal raiding” sitting at 13%.  The Mythic achievement being low makes sense, you’d sort of expect it to aim for the top 1%.

Pet battles though…that’s an odd one. It was super popular in MoP.  There’s more data here, where it seems ~25% of playerbase has had some depth in pet battles (getting quite a few to level 25).  Though there’s a rather significant drop after the 300 battle mark.  Even more data here in terms of the number of battles, where clearly the WoD implementation didn’t resonate with players.  Also quite evident, nobody gives a toot about PvP pet battles.  I wonder what Wilhelm has to say about that, given his series of pet battle posts.

Flight in Dreanor is also an interesting topic, to me at least.  Here’s some data on it.  It shows that ~30% of the active players have the appropriate achievement, though about 60% have the basics down.  Very telling is the drop from 100-200 treasures, as only the first is needed for flight.  Even after getting the ability to fly, very few are chasing treasures.  Given those numbers, it really is a head scratcher as to how important flight is to the player base if 60% didn’t think it worthwhile.

Class representation per item level is also pretty neat.  The ones with a downward trend would indicate a more casual/non-raiding attitude.  Rogues and Monks have neat low ilevel appeal but then people either quit them, or go deep into raiding.  5x more Hunters than Monks is pretty darn telling though. I would have thought better representation since Monks are a triple-spec, sort of like Paladins and Druids, but it’s also a class with weird momentum.

I’m trying to find an up to date version of this, but this March 2015 data on raiding is telling, about 2 months after Blackrock (raid #2) opened.  60% completed the first raid on a minimum of LFR, 8% for raid #2.  0.4% completed Mythic raid #1 (that’s about 25,000 people) and I don’t think it’s worth talking about raid #2 (~1200 people).  These numbers align with what was seen in SoO back in the MoP days.  The trend was around 70/40/25/10 for the first tiers and 50/20/15/1 for the later tiers.  I’d be surprised if Mythic raiding was even an option in Legion.  Given the user base, it’s pretty striking how few people actually bother with it.  It’s hard to see the breakdown in WoD for Normal & Heroic with that data, but the trends are similar to what happened in MoP.  I guess the days of banging your head against a single boss for a week are gone, people would want some sort of steady progress. I would find it hard to argue that WoW being more casual killed Mythic raiding as the % is less important than the actual number of players.  If anything it would seem that Mythic raiders just moved on.

I’d be hyper interested in the 5 man dungeon achievements, per expansion.  WoD had some good ones that were completely useless in terms of gearing, but MoP’s launch had some neat ideas.  Once Timewalking is fully fleshed out, maybe there’s some data from that.  If it’s anything lower than 50%, I’d be truly surprised.

Analytics are a tough one, since you’re often missing context.  Raids in WoD are arguably much more accessible due to Flex, so that Mythic content is only about prestige/e-peen, clearly less important than originally thought.  Pet battles, once a darling, have been underused in the expansion.  PvE content is highly active, given the apexis numbers.  Flight has only minor appeal to the playerbase, either indicating that people never leave their garrisons or that the movement system in WoD is sufficiently good to not be worth the effort to improve (my vote on the former).  Class balance is actually pretty good, if you look at it objectively, with only small variances within a class.

It’s too early for a full post-mortem on the WoD expansion but there are certainly clear trends that emerge.  I’m quite curious as to how the developers can/will try to use those trends to their advantage.

Alts and Accessibility

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I played most of WoW Vanilla and the start of TBC before taking a break.  I clearly remember coming back and being so far behind the attunement curve, that raiding in WoW was pretty much done for me (at least until LFR gave me easy mode).  Sure, each expansion had the allure of a new set of raids (or recycled ones like in LK) but after being OUT of it, there was little motivation to get back into it.  RIFT was pretty similar, where a summer vacation for a few weeks broke the raiding guild into two pieces that never recovered.  Since that point, my will to raid has been pretty darn low.

The exception to this rule is FF14.  Raids (that have no trash I should add) are part of the leveling process and 8 to 16 players in size.  Sure, it’s LFR, but the challenge is there for all of them, unless you greatly outgear it.  I know I’ve wiped more on those raids than in all the dungeons combined.  Once I hit level 70, I’d queue up for the various daily roulette options, including the raids.  I enjoyed it a lot, made friends and joined a guild.

Ok, quick aside for a minute.  One of my favorite all-time games is Shadow of the Colossus.  I remember reading about it well before it was released and people were clamoring that an “all boss” game couldn’t work.  Well… suck eggs, it worked wonders.  The game was structured without loot drops (aside from bosses) so if it did have trash, it would be meaningless aside from time padding.  FF14’s raid structure is pretty darn close to the same – have engaging bosses, get rid of the rest.  Food for thought.

Back on topic.  FF14’s raids are accessible.  WoW’s were not, but then there weren’t exactly 100 games to choose from before LK came out.  Wildstar’s were not at launch (or ESO’s version but only due to veteran levels).  There’s a solid difference between making something accessible, and then making something engaging.

Diablo 3’s seasons are a pretty darn good example.  The Story Mode was required for each new season, up until Season 4.  Story Mode is fine and dandy, but it has half the loot of adventure mode and takes 5x as long.  Plus, after having done it a bajillion times, you’ve kind of proven capable no?  This gets into the whole character/player debate, where having to unlock more stuff on a separate character is mostly padding.

I get it, battle scars and all that jazz.  But the accessibility door for end-game content is measured in two distinct elements, which are related but not equal – time and stats.  Time is padding.  You need it, otherwise the game takes 4 hours to complete.  It’s not a measure of skill, it’s a measure of patience.  Daily quests, rep grinds and attunements on trivial content are all time-based.  Stats are just plain gear checks.  With enough skill/experience, you can often speed up the gear check process.

The first time through, people are willing to suck up the time portion and lack of experience makes the stat portion take a while.  The second time through the time portion is annoying, and the stat portion can be overcome more quickly.  I’m certainly not expecting an alt to be as powerful as a main without any investment but at the same token, the time padding needs to be drastically reduced.  WoW tried to address this in MoP with the rep tokens, that nearly doubled the reputation gained for all characters after you had maxed out one.  SWTOR’s legacy system provides similar perks for alts.  FF14 bypasses it altogether since you only have 1 character.

This is a long stretch analogy but let’s say you’re a manager at a sales company.  15 years of experience, lots of contacts and a solid knowledge of the business.  Layoffs come around and you need to find a new job (assuming jobs are to be found).  You’re not expected to be doing entry level work, having to put in another 15 years to get back to where you were.  There’s a learning curve for sure, but that should be relatively quick compared to what you went through before.

The more people have access to do, the more they will end up trying those piles of things.  Putting in artificial gates, especially ones that impede 80-90% of the playstyles (since every extra class is a playstyle) just seems like a weird position to me.  An alt-friendly game is quite clearly a long-term game.  It’s evidently the future…just depends on who decides to get on the train before getting hit by it.

MMOs and Stickiness

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For an MMO to survive, it needs stickiness – at least if they plan on getting people to continue to pay on a monthly (or just use the cash stop).  Destiny, D3, CoD aren’t really MMOs due to the lack of the word massive, but more so because their financial model is box-based.  FPS types in particular, launch a new version every year or two.  MMOs, the more generic kind, last for years.

Stickiness is important because it keeps people playing, it keeps the world alive.  It’s more than just a user base. As most MMOs have a leveling phase, even a high amount of players that played sporadically and left would cause a serious issue since there’d be less and less people as you leveled up.  Players need to play, and then keep playing for extended periods of time.  It’s been noted in quite a few places that people are what keep other people logging in.  If it wasn’t for guilds in WoW, it would be fair to say that a significant chunk of their users would have left a long time ago.  People need something to do when they log in, and someone to do it with.

A couple years ago (pretty much to the day) I wrote a series of posts about social economies (1, 2, 3 & 4).  In terms of timing, this was during FF14’s relaunch, a year after SWTOR’s conversion and during the “hype” phase of Wildstar and ESO.  Looking back at it, it’s almost a wish list for what I was expecting in both of those games and truth be told, I was generally disappointed.

Say what you will about the leveling portion of a game, the truth of the matter is that the mechanics either work or do not work.  Most people get a darn good feeling for a game in the first hour.  From that point until the “end game”, it’s the social aspect that keeps people playing.  Sure, there’s always the solo-minded player, but even they need to see other people playing the game around them.  But group-based activities have a massive impact on retention.  During the leveling portion it gets quite complicated mind you – travel time and level disparity the 2 main issues.  Mentoring/level sync is a key solution to address this, though only a few games support it.  Group teleports are also quite useful, though to avoid abuse they typically need long cooldowns.  While simple in concept, the mentoring portion can be quite complex to implement, still… it pays off exponentially later on.  FF14 learned this lesson well in v1, and made massive strides in progress with ARR.  There is group content everywhere while leveling, level syncs are included and group teleports are simple.

Once you reach end-game, then the real challenge of long-term gaming takes place.  Progress moves from “do anything and you get experience” to “do this small subset of activities to get gear”.  Both have the same result, more numbers, but one is a heck of a lot more complicated to balance.  The content needs to be accessible and engaging.  For every hurdle that’s put in front of content, a game loses players.  This isn’t a bad thing, as that hurdle is certainly a motivator ion terms of challenge to the player base.  It’s just balancing how many hurdles you put in to see the players using the content drop in line.

For example, ESO at launch had veteran levels.  You reached the max for your faction, then needed to do both of the other faction’s quest lines to reach the true end game.  It was pure padding and a massive hurdle for the player base.  People just abandoned the game completely at that point, since it opened up the same issues mentioned above about the leveling portion of the game – level disparity and travel time.  ESO didn’t have guilds as seen in other games either, it was simply a chat channel.  So the sticky glue keeping people together was pretty weak.

Wildstar at launch had veteran dungeons, adventures and raids for max level players.  Each was a solid content piece on its own.  Unfortunately, in order to move from one tier to the next, the attunement hurdle was present – requiring gold medals.  One small mistake and the gold medal was gone, and so was the group.  I personally ran dungeons with the guild and it was fun if you weren’t chasing a medal.  Sadly, if the guild wasn’t around, random groups were next to impossible to complete.  Without the ability to be social outside the guild, people left in droves.  It took a while but the devs updates the content to provide more solo/group options at 50, but also to drastically reduce the attunement requirements, making random groups much more viable.  Before the F2P conversion though, there were simply not enough people playing to get into a random group, making populations stagnant/decline.  It had a pretty solid guild structure, but without accessible content, people just didn’t have anything to do but chat.  And without “roots” in the game, people moved on.

WoW’s recent expansion went full-out on making content accessible, with the tiniest of hurdles.  I ran a test with my Druid and was able to level from 91 to 100, and complete LFR without leaving my garrison (aside to collect more building plans).  There was no incentive to be social and with the fast-food mentality of content, it was far from engaging.  Losing half the subscribers(!!) is a pretty solid sign in itself that the social glue keeping that game going has almost dried up.

Designing stickiness is hard work.  Looking at one item alone isn’t enough; it’s the sum of all the parts.  A game could have great dungeons but no group-finder.  It could have superb guild tools but nothing for the guild to actually do.  Beta testing, heat maps, analytics…those all indicate what is working and what isn’t.  It takes a really good dev team to plan that ahead of time and an even better team to make the changes after the game has launched.  It’s good that both ESO and Wildstar have made some large strides to address their core issues from launch.  Fingers crossed that the next MMO out the game applies all these lessons before launching, and saves themselves a ton of headaches.

Time is Relative

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Time is relative.  *deep thoughts*  Age certainly has an impact on my recollection of events, or even my appreciation of them.  The time at the pool watching my kids swim feel so much longer than actually being in lake with them.  Observing and not participating makes things take a long time, or at least make me think that they do.

I was baking on the weekend, and the squirts helped out at the start.  I’m sure it took 3 times as long to get the work done, but it flew by.  Making dinner with the wife to host Thanksgiving was also a real time machine.  And last night we watched a bit of Suits and the clock just seemed to drone on.  Maybe I’m just more time conscious lately, or perhaps living the moment a bit more.  I’m glad that I’m done with the White Rabbit syndrome of “I’m late”, and instead in the mindset of “so what?  Let’s enjoy it.”  I’d like to think it’s a healthier mindset.

Wildstar

I find that my Esper and Engineer aren’t as compatible as I’d like.  Because the Elder Gem experience is character specific, and that exceeding the weekly cap grants a decent sized boost to gold, playing 2 characters is actually worse off than playing one.  Housing, Elder Gems, Ability Points and AMP Points are character specific, which is a pet peeve right now.  Truth be told, it always has been, but after having played a fair chunk of FF14, it seems downright archaic.  The concept that a character is an island just doesn’t work for me anymore, especially if the “long tail” gameplay needs to be repeated multiple times.  WoW started paying a bit more attention to this in MoP, then stomped on the idea in WoD and just made everything easy mode, shortening the tail.  Making me play longer is a good thing.  Making me repeat the bite size pieces ad infinitum is what drives people elsewhere.

I started a Warrior for kicks, to see the starter experience.  It’s a whole lot better.  Crazy better even.  Then it gets into the regular starting zones, though the first quest hub has a ton of content to get a grasp on things.  Content overload almost. The skill distribution hasn’t changed, or at least not enough for me to notice.  This ends up a bit in the lines of the Tortuga zone in Age of Conan, where the starting experience is amazing, then there’s nothing for a long time, then amazing again.

The classes change so much with skill/amp unlocks, and tier upgrades, that it really makes it hard for the game to properly explain mechanics at the start, in that they are relative at the end.  FF14 addresses this problem with forced grouping, through dungeons.  They even have mini-instances to understand the ever increasing complexity of group encounters (stuns, avoid AE, AE attacks, running, using items, etc…).  I sometimes feel like Wildstar gets you to level 10, then it’s all deep end.  The deep end is amazing, without question, but the F2P conversion is showing the cracks at how prepared people are for it.  If the game forced players to complete the normal modes (scaled to the appropriate level) before the veteran modes, I think people would be better off.  And it’s not like there are 100+ dungeons either.

More ramblings than anything useful, I know.  But the game is just screaming potential, with a few tweaks here and there.  A metric ton of quality of life items were applied in the F2P conversion.  It’s those changes that really put into contrast the core mechanics that are just way more complicated to resolve.  Another post will have me get into the topic of solo vs. group activities.  The more incentives there are in group work, and the easier it is to access (not complete, just access), the healthier a game becomes.  Next time.