XBOX One Launch – Hmmm

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So the time came and went and Microsoft surprised next to no one when they showed next to nothing related to games and everything related to a new home media center.

Here’s a decent comparison chart between both the PS4 and the X1. I’m actually surprised that with 3 months of time between the Sony event and this one, that Microsoft couldn’t come up with something better than Kinect 2.0 and group Skype.

The real question heading into today was if the new X1 would require a persistent internet connection.  The answer is a definite maybe – Microsoft posted some stuff then deleted it.  From what we do understand, games will require a physical install, load instantly, and likely require a fee to transfer to another account.  Essentially killing the used game industry in a small blow.   Interesting.

Consoles are used as access points for games.  X360 and PS3 are very poor experiences compared to PCs today.  My PS3 can take 2 minutes or up to 10 depending on if there’s a patch I need.  My PC is just always ready.  My PS3 is tethered to a single screen, my laptop can connect to anything.  I have a controller for both.  The difference between what I’m typing on today and what was shown was the media console.

How exactly is cable TV and movies going to work on a console?  They spent 30 minutes on those features, which I’m sure Comcast, Bell and Rogers are asking questions about too.  Integrated with locally installed content?  Ok, I have that already.  With live TV?  What’s that going to cost?  Swap seamlessly between it all?  With 8 gigs of RAM?  That, to quote a great mind, is unpossible.

So after a few hours to think about it, I don’t see how Sony or Microsoft really gained “points” with the gaming crowd with either demonstration so far.  Neither showed anything that qualified as games.  They all touted more realism and more polygons, like every other console launch ever.  I do know Sony is aiming for a more “low cost/free” approach to gaming and that Microsoft is really adamant to keep the “pay me now and later, and some in-between too” model.  Considering that BOTH new consoles are service-based rather than simply tools to get to games, I am extremely curious to see how both companies will monetize the bells and whistles they’ve been touting.

Can I Have The Car With That Kitchen Sink?

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Wildstar.  Lovely, lovely Widstar.  First – read this.  I’ll wait.

 

Let’s go over the list so far.

  • Great art – check
  • Levels – check
  • Integrated zones – check
  • Dynamic content – check
  • Active combat (avoid the fire!) – check
  • Talent system – check
  • Customization – check
  • PvP – check
  • Dungeons – check
  • Housing – check
  • Mentoring – check
  • Dungeon housing – check?
  • Focus on tactics, not zerging – check
  • End-state content – check

I know of no game that launched with all this working.  I know of only a few that had half this list working.  You’re lucky if you get 2 of them right these days.

There are 3 possible outcomes that I can see.  First, the most probable.  The game launches, has everything in it, works about 50% of the time.  Two, the game launches, everything is broken and it’s a massive failure.  Three, they somehow manage to pull of the most amazingly smooth launch in history and become a shining beacon of tomorrow.  I’m hoping for #3, but I’m betting on #1.

Well, there is a fourth one.  Carbine is going to pull off the most massive troll prank in the history of gaming.

Neverwinter Action

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In every game that I’ve played, I’ve had a main character than was self-sufficient.  My gaming hours are strange, so grouping up was hard.  EQ grouping was an exercise in teeth pulling and it today it seems every other group has someone who can’t count to 10 without taking off their shoes.  EQ I was a necro (fear kiting!), WoW I was originally a Rogue (stun locks!), then swapped to a Shaman and finally a Monk.  Neverwinter, I play a Cleric.  I always had healing alts for some reason but this time it’s a main.

In nearly every game I can think of, healing is both targeted and direct.  This means you aim for someone, press a button and their health bar goes up.  A Neverwinter Cleric is not like that.  Since the game controls are mouse-look enabled, you have to point to your target to heal them.  Not going to happen in group combat.  Instead the game uses a “smart heal” system that automatically targets users based on lost health (both as a % and as a total).  Often times this will mean the tank but sometimes the heal hits the wrong person.  Fine.  That’s why the game uses a passive/over-time/ae heal structure.

Clerics have a debuff for their enemies called Astral Seal, which caused all attacks on the target to heal the attacker. There is a targeted AE heal – Bastion of Health – which is pretty solid but hard to target when people move.  Forgemaster’s Flame gives a damage effect to an enemy and heals the party that’s nearby.  Sunburst provides knockback + AE healing close to you.  Healing Word is targeted but it’s a heal over time.  The Divinity heal is targeted but also over time.  And… that’s pretty much it for healing.  You have 1 direct heal.  Everything else is more or less what I call “healing obfuscation”. You press buttons but people seem to be healed more or less by accident than on purpose.  Due to the way the game manages skills, you can’t just stand there and spam heals.

This system means that players have a huge responsibility for their own well-being.  Many a time I’ve had group members take a massive hit because they “stood in the fire” and died a few seconds later because of enemy focus fire.  As an action-rpg-mmo, everyone and their mom need to be moving around.  Dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodge.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a single group could complete anything without a healer past level 30.  It’s when to compare to other MMOs, healing is not going to instantly save lives.

This has two main benefits that I rather enjoy.  The first is player responsibility and role management.  Other than a Rogue standing on the boss, everyone else needs to run around and control the map.  It is extremely active.  Stand and spam will get you killed and you will get frustrated.  This will eventually weed out a lot of players in terms of group content.  Second is that bosses don’t have any abilities that need to be soaked as every big hit can be avoided.  BioShock Infinite (and games w/ regeneration shields) have a problem in that if you pump your shields, in order for an enemy to feel threatening, he needs to be able to drop your shields in a hit.  These are damage spikes and they are often unavoidable.  Horribad gameplay.  If you reward players for managing incoming damage, does it ever make the game more enjoyable.  But it is different and a type of different that not everyone will enjoy.

I can run an LFR in WoW while watching a movie – which I consider the summit of casual play.  I can’t do anything combat related in Neverwinter without actively moving and attacking, or I’m going to die in 10 seconds.  I expect Wildstar to be similar, based on the data provided so far.  DCUO sort of had this.  It’s a pile of fun.

Free to Play Foibles

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Since Rift is going F2P in June, quite a few people have voiced some concerns over the business model and the long term ramifications.  I think Wilhelm has the most sober approach to it all.  There are quite a few items I would like to discuss here that I think many people have either overlooked or simply not really thought much about.

A subscription game has a relatively assured income model.  You have X players you get X money.  As long as the playerbase is happy, you’re going to bring in money.  This part I don’t really get about RIFT since the quality has always been there but without Hartman at the helm, we all pretty much figured this was going to happen.  WoW makes about $50 million a month and can amortize/invest into future content development.  The thing about themeparks is that the developers determine the content and the players consume it.  Given WoW’s development cycle, you’re paying about $60-$100 per patch and then another $60 per expansion pack.  Take any other themepark F2P game and you can pay much, much less for content – sometimes nothing.  Sandboxes do not have this problem (hence UO still be subscription) and PvP games are pretty close to this.  This is rather clear if you take a step back from the actual game.

Where people tend to trip up a bit is two-fold.  First, a company needs to make money and people have to spend money.  I know, simple.  The thing about making money is that you have to consistently make it.  If you’re selling unlocks for an account, things that last forever, then after a while, people won’t be buying them if they’ve been there for a long time.  You need new players to buy that sort of stuff.  In order to make cash, you need to sell consumables.  In a level-based, gear-based system, what is consumable?  New content is one, but the price tag to develop it is high and you’re not sure to get the money back.  Character customizations work but again, unless you’re overwriting what was there before, you’re not going to have long term success.  Devs have yet to figure out this problem, instead they all rely on lockboxes, which is more or less gambling.

This is where it gets tricky.  As a general rule, people are stupid.  A person is smart, certainly.  Groups of people, in small enough quantities can show smarts – hence guilds.  Large groups, as is evident in any political circle, are as dumb as bricks – if not simply lemmings.  Neverwinter’s spam of who is successfully unlocking mounts in their gambling boxes invariably makes other people think “I can win too”.  Even the lottery is a tax on the stupid as you have a better chance to be hit by lightning twice before winning the lottery once.  People still buy dozens of tickets a week.

So you end up in the situation where developers have yet to find a consumable item that doesn’t make players feel like they are getting gouged (which is why we pay subscriptions right?) and resort to the lowest common denominator.  Which the public happily provides.

A third point that I need to bring up is the comparison to F2P in the Asian market.  The majority of those games are P2W, clearly.  And the majority only stay on the market for 12-18 months.  This is the polar opposite of the western F2P market.  For some reason I can’t yet figure out, our side of the ocean wants free games for years and years and years.  If you’re too cheap to pay 10$ a month for a F2P game, you shouldn’t complain that they are offering items to people who will.  If you’re unable to find things to buy at that price point, which I personally find issue with, then there’s simply a problem with the financial model of the game (*cough* SWTOR *cough*).

While I might think that RIFT could have continued for another 10 years with a subscription model, apparently they were getting enough feedback that F2P games were eating into their profits.  WoW is no different I’m sure.  Someone will have to make the tough decision of either guaranteed income and to weather the F2P storm while the market evolves or to jump into a pool of cannibalistic fish who will do everything to destroy their competition.

Is Free to Play here to stay?  Yes.  Is the current market deployment sustainable? No.  Did the exact same thing happen to subscriptions over the past 5 years?  Hell yes.

Neverwinter – Cleric Fight Video

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I did a bit of questing last night and the final solo boss of the zone was this guy.  The video gives you an idea of what mid-level Cleric combat looks like.  It’s much, much more active than any other MMO you’ve likely played.

Group combat is very similar, if not more active due to threat issues.

Neverwinter Pit Fight

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Astral Diamonds come into the system through Daily Quests and events.  Since the AD are used to buy everything on the AH and do a wide majority of character customization, you need lots of em.  Heck, the best pet in the game costs 980K AD and at level 38 I’m sitting on 50K.

The skirmish event was on, meaning that completing one gave me a chest with 1,000 AD.  When this event is NOT active, even as a Cleric, I can wait 20 minutes to get into a queue.  When the event is active, it’s under 5 minutes.  My tank, level 18, seems to insta-queue no matter the time.  The daily quest for skirmishes gives you 2,000AD but past level 30 you need to complete 2 of them.  This is hard to do when there isn’t an event. Plus, if you’re on a quests and get into a queue, you lose all non-overworld progress.  Overworld meaning the 15 or so locations you see on the big map, which is only about 10% of the content.  Last night my queue came up when I was on the last boss on a hard quest.  Hard to restart :/

Anyways, here’s a quick video of the current skirmish someone else took since I didn’t get FRAPS installed until after I was done.

The entire event is in a room that my AE spell covers 25% of the space.  As usual, the last boss has what seems to be infinite timed add spawns – in this case 1 caster and 2 wolves.  The run I had last had such poor coordination that there were always 2 casters up aiming directly for me and 2-3 wolves chasing me around.  And no tank on either run, in fact one had 2 wizards and the second had 3.  Fun times!

Since I hit level 35, I’ve gained a new AE heal spell and my gameplay has changed dramatically because of it.  Group content is harder, I have more powerful skills that dramatically affect the gameplay and it’s like a new game is opening up.  What a massive difference from every other MMO out there.

The downside is that nearly every group I’ve run with has had at least one person just quit the group and due to the in-game mechanic change and they are listed as disconnected and the spot stays blank.  I could use that extra body.  Neverwinter seriously needs a vote kick option or some way to manage this.  Grouping tools should be a priority.

I should mention that gear drops in the game are a strange affair.  I think WoW has brainwashed people to think that Green << Blue <<<< Purple.  Here are comparative items, at my level.  I mean there’s a difference, sure but it isn’t massive.

Neverwinter - Blue Item

Neverwinter - Green Item

The fun part here is that since people don’t understand that gear is replaced in a day and that there is a massive price difference (800 vs 50K), you can make a pretty penny if you play the cards right.  The downside is that people roll /need on gear that they can’t use.  Greedy buggers.

The Trinity’s Crutch

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Last night I ran a dungeon in Neverwinter as a Cleric.  Throne of Idris.  We had 1 Wizard, 2 Great Weapon Fighters and 1 Rogue.  That’s right, no tank.  I died a fair bit and the last boss was a 10 minute+ fight (well, on the 3rd attempt) of running around after the Wizard left and the GWF died, leaving us with 3 to kill a 5 man boss.  I danced and jived and sucked back healing potions and screamed when the boss finally dropped dead.  It was a ton of fun.  It was also a level 40 dungeon that took over 90 minutes.

I’ve been gaming for quite a long time and 99% of it deals with combat.  Sometimes this is a war of words but often with someone taking a blunt instrument to the head.  In both cases, combat is a combination of taking an attack, recovering from the attack and giving your own attack.  Hence the Holy Trinity concept of Tank, Healer and DPS.  Other than Guild Wars 2, I can’t think of any class-based game that didn’t explicitly focus on this trinity.  Sandboxes (EvE, UO, DF, etc…) are not included since most players will build a character with all 3 facets.

In older versions of D&D (pre v4), you had the concept of trinity but a lack of good tools.  You needed a great GM and a decent ruleset to make it work.  Or really good players.  A bad GM would send everyone after the Cleric or Wizard, then slowly choke down the rest of the group.  MMOs brought the concept of Threat as a mechanic to the table, where players were ranked, based on actions, and the monsters attacked the player at the top of the list.  At lower skill levels, this works rather well since DPS and Tanks and Healers are somewhat even in terms of output, since the scale is small.  At higher levels, as is evident in WoW, DPS will outpace a tank’s threat by exponential factors.  Inversely, as tanks get better, healers have less threat since they have less to heal.  Until that point, Healers are wearing “kick me” signs.

Developers try to address these issues with 3 tools.  The first is a threat modifier, where you do more/less threat per action based on your skills or class.  Tanks typically want more, healers a whole lot less and DPS can be used as the middle ground.  Using WoW again as an example, Vengeance provides a DPS boost to a tank based on the damage they take.  This gives tanks the ability to hold threat against tons of enemies while DPS is going wild.

The second is with a taunt.  A taunt does one of two things.  Either it gives you a massive boost of threat or it puts you at the top of the threat list.  The former only seems like the latter when you’re close to the top.  I’m still trying to figure out if Neverwinter uses the 2nd type or not.

The third method is called a threat wipe, and it’s usually seen as dirty pool by players.  This is where a boss is going smooth and all of a sudden he forgets everything that’s happened and you need to restart the whole threat dance.

I play a Cleric and a Tank in Nevewinter.  Again, Open Beta disclaimer.  Threat in the game is currently broken and it’s enough to reduce my enjoyment of the multiplayer aspect of the game.  As a Cleric, one bug fix is that I need to remove all my gear then re-equip it to have a chance to survive any group encounter.  The way the Cleric works is through mostly Heal over Time spells.  Given that there are continual spawns on a boss, any boss encounter I’m going to get swamped with enemies, so I tend to gather them up and run to the middle pile, hoping the tank can get them.  Which isn’t often.  As a Tank, I have a 15 second taunt that seems to make the enemies turn to me, then turn away after 1 hit.  My threat building skills work in a small cone in front of me and for them to really work, I need to block all attacks (due to the mechanics of the Mark skill).  Since blocking means not moving, I can’t really pick up the adds and keep the boss on me.  I’ve worked a few things out so far but jeebus is it ever hard to keep threat active.

As much as I enjoyed the dungeon run last night, there were 3 or 4 times where I just wanted to quit the run from sheer frustration.  The thing that kept me going were the other players and the attitude of “damn this game, we’re going to beat it”.  I ended the run with no drops, next to no experience gain, 90 minutes out of pocket but 3 new names added to the friends list.  Something to cheer about after all.

Also, I need to get FRAPS re-installed…

Neverwinter – Story and Lore

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I know I said I’d get to the Foundry but Tipa’s impression post got me thinking more about the odd feeling I get in Neverwinter.

If you’ve played any recent game, then you’re familiar with the typical storyline.  Batman needs to stop the Joker, Jim needs to stop the Zerg, players need to defeat Crucia.  From start to end, there’s a cohesive story that you’re a part of, either as the main protagonist or as a side-kick.  Games where you’re a side-kick are usually stinkers, since you’re lacking the power to change the game.

MMOs are really similar to this in that they need to provide a Hero’s Journey – from small beginnings come great things.  You start off as a plucky hero (willing or not), fight your way through hordes of minions and eventually lay waste to some big bad wolf at the end.  Expansion comes out, new story, new path.  Somehow my badge of honor that shows I killed Deathwing doesn’t impress the monkeys who are 1 level higher for some reason.  I digress.

The thing about this main story is that there are plenty of smaller stories along the path.  Each “zone” has a particular flavor and point.  Save the trees, keep the boars away and whatnot.  Individually they are fine but the stories combined create lore.  This is used not only to drive you forward in a game but to frame the world ahead of you.  If in one zone I need to skins bears and the next I’m hunting zombies, there’s a distinct lack of cohesiveness and the lore becomes hard to follow.  WoW has amazing success because the lore is so consistent.  EvE has success since the lore is player created.  At any point, you can look back and see “this is what’s happened so far”.

Back to Neverwinter.  The game has no lore, it only has a setting.  I’m in Faerun, got it.  Why am I attacking these skeletons again?  Who are they working for?  Each zone has an underlying story but with 20+ zones, none of them seem to link to each other at all.  This is where I think the D&D license wasn’t truly understood.  When I sit down at a tabletop, I am playing my character across multiple sessions and multiple adventures.  Sure I might be in the North killing Giants one day and on a boat in the South chasing pirates the next but the cohesion between the settings is player based.  I explicitly know this because I chose to go on that boat (or lost a bet).  Neverwinter has no such choice.  I am going through multiple campaigns with the same player but zero other linkages between them.  It also doesn’t help that the writing is atrocious.

neverwinter demon

Cool. Who are you?

It’s too late now to ret-con the story from start to finish but I am hoping that the first module released addresses this issue.  Right now, my best bet for a consistent and coherent story is the Foundry.  A few of them are series with promise.  If you’re playing Neverwinter, give Old Jerry’s Saga a shot to see how the absurd can be a valid critique of the common.

How Big is 1.3 Million

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According to MMOData, World of Warcraft lost the following:

  • 0.6 Aion
  • 1.2 Runescape
  • 2 Second Life
  • 2.5 EvE
  • 5 Rift
  • 5 LOTRO

And however many are in Star Wars, Star Trek and all the other F2P games.  Also, WoW could lose 1.3 million players for the next 4 years and still have more players than nearly every single MMO on the planet.

WoW, as much as people might hate on it, has been the poster child for making MMOs cool to society.  Gone (mostly) are the days that you were a super geek who lived in your mom’s basement to play online games.  The stereotypical WoW player is seen as your average person on the street.  Somehow that’s a bad thing.  The stereotypical EvE player, you’d likely want to lock up behind bars.

There’s simply too many games out there, with too many payment models for a non-niche game to find the massive success that WoW has achieved.  I don’t see any other game ever hitting 5 million players, let alone 12 million.  It’s still there, still stronger than all its competition and still commands players attention.  What other game do people talk about that haven’t played it in 5 years?

Neverwinter – Character Progression

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Just to re-iterate on all previous Neverwinter posts, the game is in Open Beta/soft launch. While the details might change, the systems are pretty much set in stone.

The basic game gives you two character slots.  I have a Devoted Cleric (healer) and a Guardian Fighter (tank).  The former is level 30, the latter level 11.  I am thinking about buying more, to give the Rogue a shot but time will tell how that works out.  Leveling (after the Foundry nerf) is done primarily through single player core quests.  Skirmishes give next to no experience and I only run them during the events to get the extra 1000 Astral Diamonds at the end.  Dungeons give decent experience but take 45 minutes and the loot system is pretty broken right now (as per my last post).  Some Foundry missions give some decent experience and loot, plus are easily repeatable.  It’s entirely possible to level solely in the Foundry but I am playing a themepark and want to enjoy the ride.

To character progression now.  After the tutorial you’re level 4 with a power in each slot.  Each level gained from that point gives you a Power Point to spend in a given skill.  Additional powers are unlocked after you’ve spent enough points (5, 10, 15, 20, etc…)  Every 10 levels you get extra stat points (STR, INT, etc..) for your character, though they have a somewhat negligible impact on the game.  Level 10 gives you access to professions and the start of the Feat system.  Similar to Power Points, you get 1 every level  and can spend them on passive boosts in a tiered structure.  At 30 you get access to a specialization (currently only 1 exists per class) and you get to spend your Feat Points on Paragon abilities.  These unlock more passive skills, in a tiered format but only along a single path (of 3).  At level 16, you get a companion that either heals, tanks or damages.  Tank is a really good bet for everyone, though if you are a tank, get the healer.  Max level for a character is currently 60.

Each class has a particular Paragon path focus to choose.   My cleric can either go for DPS, healing or buffs.  Powers have 3 ranks each, and you can only equip a small subset at any given time.  So my Cleric has 2 passives, 2 dailies, 3 encounters and 2 at-will powers selected for solo play and a different set for group play – so a minimum of 14 points and a maximum of 28 to get everything you might need for both roles.  You can reset these choices for a Zen fee (the F2P currency).  You have enough points to spent in the Powers without really worrying about “mistakes” but the Feat/Paragon portion is lot less forgiving since they are all passive abilities and can have a dramatic impact on gameplay.  The forums are a great place to read up on the choices.

Abilities are broken down into quite a few categories.  Stats, the core numbers D&D uses for Strength, Dexterity and so on, are rather fixed along your path.  It’s unlikely you’ll exceed 26 points in your core stat by level 60.  The other abilities are a different matter and they work with a “ratings” system, where you don’t gain 1% crit, you gain 50 critical rating, which depending on your level, gives you specific % increase.

  • Power – Increases damage and healing
  • Critical – Increases the odds of dealing a critical strike
  • Armor Penetration – A % increase in damage to enemies with armor
  • Recovery – Increases the speed of Encounter power recovery
  • Movement – Increases movement speed
  • Defense – Decreases the damage you take
  • Deflect – Increase odds of blocking damage entirely
  • Regeneration – Increased life regeneration
  • Life Steal – A % of damage you deal is converted to healing
  • Maximum Health – Increases health

Gear can come with 3 of these abilities on it and up to two enchantment slots.  The slots use gems with the same stats but come in three flavors – offense, defense and utility.  For example, my Cleric would aim for gear with Power, Critical and Recovery and slot Power/Recovery for Offense, Defense for Defensive and Movement for Utility.  My Tank is likely to go for Defense, Recovery and Life Steal.

I personally think that the gear point spread is too high right now and that makes gear way more valuable than it should be when it comes to upgrades.  From one item to the next might have a 10% increase in power.  The game also “recommends” gear upgrades but this is based on adding all the stats together to give you a GearScore (yes, that’s the name).

In the end, the question remains “does my character progress?”.  The answer is a yes and even though it uses an old “talent” system, the fact that you get something at level up is a great carrot on the stick for progress.  I’ll get a new skill and try it out.  I’ll get a new piece of gear pretty frequently too.  There’s always a feeling of there being more and that keeps people playing.  I know I’m still having a blast.