Blizzard Design – Lessons Learned

Posted on by

Rohan and Syp got me thinking about how developers are forced to be iterative in terms of addition rather than in terms of subtraction.  What I mean by this is that any given game that expects longevity cannot regress in terms of feature sets.  People have expectations upon purchase and business models are dependent on having clientele – MMOs triply so.

Let’s consider the two main items in the news.  Titan has been restarted (I think this is the 3rd time) and Blizzard has plans on a D3 expansion.  The former isn’t surprising given Blizzard’s track record.  They have released the following games of note: Wacraft (1/2/3), Starcraft (1/2), Diablo (1/2/3) and WoW.  You would be hard pressed to argue that any given game in a series was a departure from the previous – simply an iteration on a given model.   To top it off, Warcraft and Starcraft are nearly direct IP thefts from Warhammer.  So in 18 years, Blizzard has 1 new IP and plenty of experience tweaking the ones they built all that time ago.  Blizzard takes very few risks so that they don’t alienate their massive playerbase.  If Titan ever does come out (they need a new codename for it), I don’t see it as being something completely new, just an iteration of an existing IP and format.  It’s worked for nearly 20 years.

The second news item deals with people’s expectations of Diablo 3’s feature set.  Consider the PS3 version has no online requirements and no AH – the two largest complaints against the PC version – many view this as a sign that those features are going to be removed from the PC proper.  Hold on a sec here.  We’re a year in and the PS3 port still isn’t ready.  We’re not talking about taking a console game with a set configuration and making it work on a bajillion PCs.  We’re talking about the other way around, which usually has more to do with the UI size and controller layout.  If it’s taken a year (arguably longer since this was rumored many years ago) then perhaps this egg is a bit tougher to crack.

In systems design we have disparate systems, integrated systems and synergistic systems.  Disparate ones are completely separate and have next to nothing to do with each other.  /gems in EQ is an example.  Integrated systems have parts that are shared between 2 or more systems.  LFD/LFR systems are here.  Synergistic systems are ones that are separate in terms of mechanics but complement each other in game.  Crafting in most cases fit the bill.

D3 was built with the AH in mind.  Stats play a much larger role here than in any other game I’ve ever played and there were clear benchmarks required for survival in Inferno when the game launched.  I can’t think of a game where 1 item level had such a massive impact on player power.  Because the Diablo model is 99% of the loot you find you can’t use, this requires a sink for the gear.  In the past it was selling/gambling.  With an AH, maybe gear you can’t use (as a Monk) someone else can (say a Wizard).  So you try to sell it.  Let’s say you find one piece of “decent but not great” gear every hour.  4 million other people are playing and doing the same.  Think about that for a second.

If Blizzard wanted to remove the AH, they would have to change the entire mechanics of how loot dropped and how monster power was calculated.  The “floor” of gear suddenly drops by a large factor and people will have a much harder time progressing.  All of a sudden, crafters become attractive (just like gambling was in D2).  Plus you still have millions of players using the AH to progress today and a rather large item gap between the top end and bottom end.  Some people don’t farm Inferno for their gear, they farm for other’s gear to make cash to buy their stuff or use the RMAH.  That and the entire business model of D3 is predicated on the RMAH.  Even if the expansion offered an off-line no-AH mode, then you’d have two similar but different games.

I don’t see an easy fix here.  I do see a lot of lessons learned, lots.

Neverwinter – That Could Have Gone Better

Posted on by

I bit the bullet and bought some more epics for my Cleric last night.  That got me to the 8300 gearscore (8328 I think I had) to give the Tier 2 dungeons a shot.  Queuing for a T2 dungeon was instant, even without a dungeon delve active.  Load it up, unequip all my gear to address the threat bug (go naked, re-equip) and look at the party.  2 wizards, 1 rogue and a great weapon fighter.  No tank.  Well, this should be fun.

We died on the first pull.  Not like a little died but more along the lines of stepping in dog poo wipe.  I let the party attack then put my Astral Shield down.  5 seconds later, everything but 1 target are on me.  I used a lot of potions that fight but still died. Without a healer, the only character than can survive for any amount of time is a well-played Rogue.  That wasn’t enough here.

Tried it again and this time we made some progress.  The wizards remembered that they were called Control Wizards for a reason.  They kept things together, the GWF and Rogue took care of the damage and I healed.  We couldn’t just run up to enemies either, we needed to pull them to us to avoid the natural chain pulls that occur in the game.  Aggro ranges are odd.

We get to the first boss, some guy with a mouth for a head.  That’s got to suck.  Anyways, he has 3 spawning pools around him that continuously spawn adds, 4 at a time.  So not only do you have a giant mouth attacking you, there is like a dozen enemies at the same time.  Threat being non-existent without a tank, I died a few times.  We somehow had the boss teleport to our spawning area and that let us kill him and move on.  Weird bug.

Moving on, we get to see more and more of these giants who deal 75% of my health in a single hit.  Fun!  There were some absolutely insane pulls on this trek and my hat is off to the group for surviving it.  Very impressive.

Then we get to the last boss.  He’s a super mega giant with 2 friendly giants around him.  Plus some other trash. And there are what seems to be 4 portals in the room that summon Berserkers.  If you don’t know what these guys are, they start off weak and once they hit 25% hit points, they hit like a convoy of Mac trucks.  I can heal 2 of them at once but 4, plus 2 giants, plus a boss?  What?

First attempt was ok, we killed one giant them got swamped.  Second attempt we tried to nuke the boss. I put Astral Seal on the boss, which causes players to heal when attacking.  That turned the ENTIRE ROOM on my butt and I died within 15 seconds.  Third attempt was tying to clean out a side of the room, no luck there.  Did I mention everything respawns in the boss room when you die?  No?  Anyways, we wiped a solid 6 times and everyone was out of repair kits at the end.   Healing isn’t the problem, threat is.  And it’s a massive one.

See, I’ve been spoiled by WoW and every other LFD tool in existence.  Games have 3 roles, tank, healer and DPS.  A LFD tool should fill in those slots appropriately.  That a Cleric is the only class that can heal and that a Guardian Fighter is the only class that can tank, you would think this would be simple to implement.  Healer/Tank + 3 anything else.  I mean anything.  Worse is that if someone leaves your group, you can’t replace them.  Aghhh!

Guild runs are cool but I have yet to find a guild that runs more than 2 teams at any given time.  And because dungeons are long, you could wait an hour or more for a team to be ready.  LFD with a premade group and people to fill the slots makes sense.  Just for the love of pete, please make sure there’s a tank and a healer or just don’t make a group.

Neverwinter – Tanks but no Tanks

Posted on by

Le /sigh, horrible pun.

Given that there wasn’t a dungeon delves active last night during my session and I had sat in the queue for 15 minutes as a Healer, I swapped to my second character, Asmira the Guardian Fighter (/tank).  I used the Gateway service while leveling and once you hit level 10, you can craft.  Getting to level 10 takes about 2 hours from creation so I did that a while back.  Crafting has one particular field, Leadership, which gives in-game experience, cash and rough astral diamonds.  People who hit 60 on day 1 used Leadership (plus real money to speed up the training) to get there.  Leadership can also give you access to crafting materials that sell decently.

On top of it, after level 11, you can pray to the gods every hour.  This gives you some experience and every day, 2 different types of tokens.  If you miss ~48 hours of praying, you lose all of 1 type of currency (which has a max of 7).

Right, so I play my cleric almost daily.  During that time, I also log in the tank to pray to get the tokens and for the experience.  Realize that I did not kill a thing or do a single quest after level 10 and using this daily prayer and Gateway/Leadership, my tank was sitting at level 22 last night and had ~100K in Astral Diamonds.  Sadly, he had no cash so no mount.

The advantages to leveling offline are pretty clear, you skip a fair amount of content and the early levels, especially before 30, are somewhat unbalanced due to a lack of skills. I can live with that.  The downside is that you are undergeared by a fair amount.  As a ranged player, this ins’t a big deal.  As a tank – not only are you taking way more damage than you should but you’re hitting with a toothpick at the same time.  Not a great combo.  Thankfully the AH is there and people post at stupid low prices.  Quick gear up.

Now for actual play.  Oh wait, I need to assign 12 skill points and redo my layout.  I like that part. Do I ever miss the old talent trees of WoW, where each level you actually got something, even if it was a small increment in power that nobody noticed.  I got to press a button!  I digress.  The tank needed to get a companion, so a healer was in line.  Off I go into the wild!

And then I died.  Forgetting about combat advantage (don’t show your back), how to block properly, how to NOT knock people into another side group and a bunch of other details that I never really needed to worry about as a ranged healer.  I dusted myself off and went back to work.  This time I pulled everyone to me, circle strafe and all that jazz to get them lined up, then AE attacks for the win.  Worked out pretty good if I do say so.

Small instance was next and these always end with a boss.  Bosses as a healer are fun, you just sit back, heal from time to time and whack a mole.  Adds come around, tank picks them up, you AE or knock them into some hole.  Bosses as a tank are a test of patience.  You’re dealing little damage, the companion ain’t much better and once the adds spawn (they always do), you need to take them down before they take down your companion.  I think this is a good thing, in the end, as it forces tanks to understand HOW TO TANK multiple creatures at end level.  I remember leveling my cleric and I found that the higher I got, the better the tanks got.  As if the leveling process weeded out all the bad ones.  It’s just not possible to reach max level as a tank without a solid understanding of the mechanics.

It’s certainly a different paradigm.  My Cleric, as per the videos I’ve posted, does everything to avoid the big hits and red circles.  My tank however, is so damn slow, she needs to block to get through them.  Going from “get these damn things off me” to “why won’t you attack me you bum!” is a fun change of pace.

Now if only the game could find a way to teach DPS to play smart. -er.

Neverwinter – That Was Different

Posted on by

In the previous post is a picture of my character.  The purple items are tier 1/2.  As you can see, there are a few slots that I need to fill out.  The cool thing about the Queue system (very similar to LFG) is that it tells you up front what to expect as loot in a given dungeon.  Seeing as how I need a belt and a rings, I queued up for Cragmire Crypts.  I also queued up for a few more dungeons (you can queue as many as you’d like) but CC prompted me before I had a chance to add too many more.

A side note here, the game has ongoing events during the day that add extra rewards.  Sometimes it’s extra PvP currency, sometimes extra XP from the Foundry and a few more.  One in particular is called Dungeon Delves.  This one guarantees a personal chest at the end of a dungeon, if you ENTER the dungeon during the event.  Could take you 4 hours to finish but the chest will be there.  I’ve only done one, but it gave me a decent ring.  The ring was bind on pickup though, hopefully this isn’t always the case.  Would hate to trash repeats when I could put them on the auction house.  (gamer says do this, the design freak says this is a bad idea).  Without the event, there are only 2 drops a dungeon.

I had mentioned a few times in the past that grouping in Neverwinter was tough in that a few items were quite different than the standard WoW seems to have put up.  Threat is extremely hard to manage on multiple enemies.  During boss fights, Cleric will take nearly all the attacks because of this.  The days of just AE blasting enemies are gone since boss trash are practically mini-bosses in themselves.  Also, the group finder tool is incapable of balancing groups outside of a healer and a tank.  I had one with 3 rogues, two of whom dropped right away.  The queue system is also unable to add more people to an on-going run and since you can’t teleport people to the group, it effectively kills any run as soon as someone drops.

So, grouping is harder since people have to pay attention.  Healing is tougher since you’re going to get hit a lot (I healed nearly 3 million the last run and average HP is ~20-25K per player).  Chaos is higher and you need to better use your skills or things will go bad and go very very bad.  The thing about today is that the players at 60 are not casual.  To be at 60 today means you put in a fair amount of time and that raises the skill bar a tad.  I am certain this will change with time, as it has with every other game.  Bell curve and whatnot.

This run went well.  Very well in fact.  Enemies died quickly.  We only had 3 people die to bad luck.  The last boss was a mess mind you but he died and none of us did.  The entire run at max level took about 40 minutes.  I remember doing it while leveling and it took well over an hour.  Made some new contacts, had a blast.  Would do it again in a heartbeat.

And here’s the real kicker.  The Queue system works instantly during a dungeon delve.  If that event is not active, you could wait 30 minutes.  It’s crazy what incentives will do.

Neverwinter – Max Level

Posted on by

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

Neverwinter Cleric at 60

Purplez

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neverwinter – Better Cleric Fight

Posted on by

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

Neverwinter – Yet Another Video

Posted on by

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

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

XBOX One – Tonedeaf

Posted on by

There are quite a few articles about reactions to the XBOX One reveal and, by and large, reaction has been negative.  Now that we’ve had a few days to digest what was and was not said, here are a few sticking points for people to consider.

It is generally agreed that the mobile/indie market is currently booming.  The average consumer is more and more device agnostic and will consume content on phone, laptop, tablet or console without real prejudice.  TVs are tools that only a single user can control and they are far from personal.  If I want to watch a movie and not bother my wife, I’ll use our tablet, for example.  Ok, we got that part.  Now watch this clip that shows all the times the words TV, Sports and Call of Duty were used in a 1 hour period.

Back?  Cool.

Let’s consider for a second what the XBOX core market is, the ones who are paying 15$ a month for services.  That’s right, gamers.  They aren’t paying that money to view adds, to use Kinect, to stream media.  The entire core structure of the XBOX community, the ones that actually tuned in to the presentation, they are all gamers.

Microsoft instead chose to demo voice activated controls, TV Skype (who in the world would use that?), football stats and streaming for nearly 40 minutes.  Content that no one who was paying attention cared two bits about.  I should add that the TV streaming controls will only be available in the US, which if memory serves correctly, is less than half of their user base.  Gamers got to see a new dog in Call of Duty.  Yay?

The real questions, the ones that have been around in rumors for months we either dismissed or confusingly answered.  Here’s what I’ve been able to find.

Does the console require internet access?  Yes and no.  You need to connect to the internet every 24 hours.  I have a few friends that will be unable to accommodate this as their only option for internet is satellite.

Can it support used games? Yes and no.  Games are installed and attached to a user account.  Transferring games will have a fee – to be disclosed.

Is is backwards compatible?  Not at all.  I get this from the console disk perspective.  I don’t get this from the XBLA portion.  This is also a massive gamble that the games that will come out will be worth buying a new console.  WiiU learned this lesson well.

How much will is cost? No idea.

What games can I play? Wait until E3.

How will it support the indies? Oddly enough, it will get worse than compared to the 360.  Devs will be unable to self-publish (they can on the PS) and additional controls will be added to the new XBLA market – effectively making it harder to get games out.

What kind of power does it have? The architecture between the XBOX and the PS4 are nearly identical, meaning that designing a game for one console will be practically the same as for another – a good thing for gamers.  That being said, the PS4 is 33% to 50% more powerful.  This isn’t hidden power like the 360 vs. PS3, this is readily accessible power.

Does it still have a subscription when every other option is free? Please note that the PS service is free, 95% of every home media service is free other than the hardware cost and every “cloud service” for gaming is currently free.  Microsoft has been mum on this.

Can I play games instantly? Apparently yes, since the system is “always on”.  (Having a Kinect camera always on in a room is a problem for me.)  When you get a new game, pop it in, you can play right away while the game installs a hard copy.  Once installed you no longer need the disk (just like a PC).  Extremely confusing is that the HDD is 500 gigs.  With my experience with Microsoft products, you’re going to be lucky to get 400 free.  You need that 400 to control all streaming content, other downloads, PVR support and a pile of other features.  500 gigs is not “future proof”.

Conclusion

After reading everything I could find on this, I am left with the conclusion that Microsoft is hedging their bets that consoles are dead and that media centers are the way of the future. They somehow believe that Kinect, being always on, is a good thing in a room with more than 2 people.  They believe that the TV (a single one) is the center of entertainment in a house.  They believe that people have 50+ inch screens to multi-task while watching a movie or TV.  They believe that games will sell on their own.

I think the price point here is going to be the real answer.  If the XBOX One turns out to be a fancy remote control for TV, what are people willing to pay?  Even if E3 showed 10 amazing games, I personally have yet to see a reason to upgrade.

Neverwinter – Cleric Fight

Posted on by

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

The Hiccup with F2P

Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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