Game Loot

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Here’s an interesting post about how loot will be decided in random group raids in the next WoW expansion.

WoW is somewhat unique here in that it has a system that selects 25 random people to complete raid content (LFR).  Anecdotally, Blizzard stated that the epitome (based on the hardcore raiders) of raids in Burning Crusade – Sunwell Plateau – had less than 1% of all players see the last boss.  So for a company to make money, they need to get those 99% to actually consume what the developers are spending money developing.  Hence the Mists of Pandaria casual approach – after Cataclysm’s horrendous “hardcore” focus.

Back on topic.  Most games that provide grouping and loot together also give you a Need/Greed/Pass system for deciding if you want a given item.  SWTOR is different in that loot is automatically assigned in raid content but rolled upon in dungeon content.  In WoW’s current LFR system, 25 people are currently selecting need just because it takes 1 other person to do so for you to lose your chance at an item.  A Prisoner’s Dilemma if you will.  This causes people to boil with rage and there to be next to zero social repercussions since you won’t be seeing those random people ever again.

The smart move is to take SWTOR’s raid loot system moving forward for random groups.  By the way, this loot system is horrible for organized groups as it actually penalizes group progress.  In organized raids, player X might already have the item and give it to player Y – increasing the group’s power.  In this new system, player X is stuck with the loot and player Y gets nothing.  That being said, in random groups where the group interest is actually below zero, a random loot system works rather well. Everyone gets a shot at something useful for their class/spec.

Moving on to loot as a whole in either a PvE or PvP setting, MMORPGs are based on statistical variances.  A player with 100 of stat X is more powerful than someone with 50.  As your power increases, the difficulty of content naturally decreases.  So let’s say Boss X takes Y amount of power to beat – in very simple terms.  As your group increases in power, they will eventually reach points where they can remove 1-2 (or more) players and still be above that Y power needed to complete content.  At that point, the actual increase in group power is negligible and the “road to power” is over for that tier of content.  Groups start selling raid spots for titles or mounts or loot.  If you can get to Y power with 5 spots open, that’s 5 spots you can sell – if money is actually a concern in your game.

The acquisition of said power is a delicate balance from a dev’s perspective.  If people surpass Y power too quickly, then the content is consumed too quickly and people need to do something else with their time.  If they never reach Y power, then you have disenfranchised consumers who see a large wall ahead of them.  There are other complex variables but that’s the basic gist of it all.  Employing a system that distributes power more fairly (read faster) decreases the amount time the content is consumed within.  Employing a system that distributes power more equally (read slower) increases the time the content is consumed within.

To be a fly on the wall of that Dev table when this exact topic comes up.  How long should content X last?  How many variants of content X are needed to keep people playing between your content cycles?  Do you increase the content cycles to compensate?  How do you please players who put in 40 hours a week and those that put in 10?  Loot drives content – otherwise people would be in IRC channels.

Focus

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In any given context, I lack focus in the immediate.  My mind wanders continuously among multiple variables and planes where I can seem extremely interested but I’ve actually moved on.  Some times when I have conversations with my wife, I’ll start laughing for no reason.  It isn’t because she said something funny, it’s because she said something that made me think of something else (a few something elses) and that made me laugh.  It’s distracting and makes it seem like I don’t care.  I do and I understand everything that’s said, it’s just that my mind works faster than people talk.

Here’s a good example.  Let’s say we’re talking and the word orange comes up.  For most people, the word simply means what it means.  You might visualize it, you might think you smell it but that’s it.  You hear the word, capture the word and move on.

 

 

I tend to stray at this point.  I hear orange and I immediately think of 4-5 associated topics, and a few sub-topics each.  I then focus on the most important one and continue down that path.  So you might be talking about oranges but in about 2 seconds, I’m thinking about Christmas 3 years ago, the meal I had and what I thought was the best part.

This gets really bad when we’re talking about a particularly interesting topic that requires reasoning and factual argument – like why the financial collapse is the result of a multiple-system failure.

So there’s a good side to this and that’s that I do very well on association games, have a well above average memory and could probably make a fair amount of money on Jeopardy.  Conversations are usually pretty easy since I’m versed in practically any topic that can come up.  I also tend to look at the big picture, sort of seeing all the dominoes in the chain.  Heck, it’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon but on everything.

The downside is that I am rarely surprised.  I might be curious as to the inner workings of something and study it until I have a good grasp – but surprises are very rare since I can relate anything to anything else.  I put things into categories and systemize them.  Social events are simply action/reactions that I can navigate through.  I can judge someone within a few seconds based on past experiences.  I can control what people think and do to a certain extent, as I can nudge them in a particular direction with questions and suggestions.  It’s manipulative and boring so I rarely do it but it’s exceedingly easy once you know how.

The worst though, above everything else, is that I can’t turn it off.  The entire time I’ve written this post, I’ve been doing it.  I will stare at the ceiling, every night in bed.  Sports are a small distraction as the input is continuous, not giving me a whole lot of time to branch off but on the hockey bench between shifts, I do it.  Heck, talking to a counselor or a doctor, I’ll do it.   It can be exhausting.

So while I live with it, I need to find ways to cope with it. I play games, increase my input stimulation, put myself in situations where there is no advantage to doing it (big one here) and find outlets for when it does happen.  This website is one of the coping mechanisms.

In the end though, if you and I are talking and I seem to either be rambling or lost in thought during a moment of silence, it isn’t because I’m not interested.  On the contrary, I’m exceedingly interested as you’ve turned on the mental switch that will try and bring more to the conversation.  Just be aware that once you get me going, it’s hard to get me to stop.

Childhood's End

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I read a lot.  A very lot.  An E-Reader makes that very easy.  Lately I’ve been on a kick of mid 20th century fiction – a lot of sci-fi.  Lord of the Flies, Foundation, I, Robot, Fahrenheit 451 and the like.  I can say with utmost confidence that sci-fi of the past is much better than today’s outings, for one major reason.  Older sci-fi was about the psychological impact of the future rather than the gadgets.  Foundation doesn’t have any major fights or technological “magic”.  It’s just people being people in a different setting.

This brings me to a recent book and probably one of the most profound I’ve read in a while – Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke.  There are 3 main parts – the advent of space ships and overlords that oversee the future of mankind, the prosperity of a golden age and finally the evolution of mankind into a higher life form.

The kicker here is that other than being actual space ships, there is next to no technology used in the entire book.  There are no Deus Ex Machina events where something happens, with no explanation, just to move the story along (a-la Dan Brown or JK Rowling).

The entire premise of the story is how humanity acts, as a whole and individually, when a higher power comes along and provides nothing but benefits, though cloaked in shadow.  Sort of like the TV show “V”, minus evil intents.  Some people welcome the change while others fight the loss of “human identity” and accomplishments.  To see how the various factions move along, in a short book mind you, to accomplish their various goals is intriguing.  Some use subterfuge, others political control and others are granted leniency simply for the sake of curiosity.

The final act however has one heck of a speech where it states plainly that man is not made for the stars.  The sheer scope of space, our galaxy and even our universe completely dwarfs anything that the human mind can comprehend.  At most, we can visualize a city or maybe a small country.  The moon takes weeks to get to, taking 30 times longer than going across the planet.  Think about that.  Jules Verne traveled across the world in 80 days.  It would take 6.5 years to reach the moon at that speed.  Our closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light years away – 8 million years if you traveled at the same speed of 80 days around the Earth.  And that’s the closest!

Secondary to the psychological impact that number has is the lack of reasoning outside of science.  Somewhat of an anti-sci-fi sentiment and more of a slant towards the paranormal.  When faced with the abyss that is the universe, you start thinking there is more than what science can describe.  When humanity evolves into simple conscious energy, to join a pre-existing mass, you feel a certain shame towards those left behind.  Again, the humans that do remain undergo more psychological trauma where their investment (children) is removed from their grasp – dooming the entire species.  The fact that the space ship aliens are unable to make this transition juxtaposes the scientific advances versus the paranormal ones.  It’s like looking at two sides of a coin and trying to decide which one is better.

It is difficult to convey the imagery of this story as it truly is a personal reflection within the circumstances.  Empathy for each situation is key and that depends on the reader’s disposition. You can take the face value of the words and be entertained or you can experience the story and become thoughtful.  This, above all other criteria, is the mark of a truly great author.

Game Integration

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So let’s say you have a game on a single platform.  You’re essentially limiting yourself to people on that platform and even those people actually need to be in front of that platform to consume your product.  Call of Duty on the PS3 can only be played at home, in front of a TV, for example.  Move your product out to a multi-platform environment and you open the doors to more customers.  Call of Duty is on the PS3, 360 and PC but they don’t talk to each other.

The next step is to integrate those platforms and essentially become platform agnostic.  In the CoD example, this really just boils down to enabling multiplayer across all platforms.  But what if we take it a step further?  Mass Effect 3 recently did this with their IOS Infiltrator game, where progress in that game affected your progress in the console version.  WoW has done this with it’s mobile armory, Rift with it’s mobile lottery/chat machine.  Heck, quite a few EA games have used Facebook to improve gameplay.  They are all united through a unique ID, for the given company.

This integration is, more or less, at the hardware level, with each game being a distinct environment but what if we took that to the next level with integration between variances of the game.  This isn’t new, as the first versions where New Game + (Chrono Trigger was the first to try this new mode out successfully) but that was always limited to you completing the game in order to experience it further in your next one.  What happens if you’re in the middle of a game and realize that you don’t like your story and want to start over?  In typical fashion, your accomplishments in one partially completed story are not found in another.

Some MMOs have changed this a bit. SWTOR is bringing in Legacy stuff but you need to trigger the events after a certain point (level 35-ish) to have access.  WoW and Rift have account bound pets/equipment and features.  Typically things that don’t have an in-game advantage other than meta.  Sharing costumes is a personal thing, not an in-game power thing.

Taking this to the next level is starting at level 1 and having character integration between everyone in your squad.  A mini-guild if you will, with a shared bank, shared achievements (with individual markers) and all the meta stuff being shared across all players.  If my Cleric in Rift has done all the raids how do I prove that I have the experience in them on my alt Mage? When I /ignore a character, I’m actually trying to ignore the person on the keyboard.  Same with adding friends.

We’re closer to this level of meta gaming than ever before, where the person behind the keyboard is identified primarily and then the characters they are playing.  The logistics are there for it to happen – you already have a unique ID on the game you’re playing.  Hash it, spit out another hidden number in-game and let people use that to track you.

Perhaps in a few years we can move along with games that interact with each other, a-la Mass Effect decision points, so that my identity with game company X is integrated into all their games.  Maybe when I buy a new RPG it defaults to my saved preferences and character settings.  I’m sure there are other facets that could move the game industry forward, so that the attachment to a game is deeper than the pixels on the screen.  Certainly there are advantages for both me and the game companies – and I can’t wait for both of us to experience them.

Mists of Pandaria

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MMO-Champion has a huge writeup of the next expansion for WoW.  The quick summary.

  • LFR now lets you roll per boss, individually.  If you are in the top 30%, then you have a chance at loot designed for you.  If the boss doesn’t have loot for your class or you lose the roll, you get cash.  Sort of how TOR does it.  Should be in the LFG tool as well…
  • Can now have 11 characters.  Makes sense since they are adding a new class.
  • AoE looting is in game.  Thank god.
  • The proposed item squish of a few months back is out.  I can’t see how this would have been balanced for the 1-70 bracket.  This does mean additional system requirements for MoP due to the huge calculations.
  • Race model updates aren’t in.  You’re still stuck with a 7 year old Dwarf and 5 year old Blood Elf.  This really needs to change…
  • 9 heroics, 3 raids with 14 bosses, 2 world bosses.  This is good.
  • Scenarios are world PvE quests (instanced though) that can work with only DPS.  Sort of how Instant Adventures work in Rift.
  • Challenge modes are timed versions of dungeons with stat caps.  All bronze gives an achievement, all silver gives transmogrification gear, all gold gives a nice mount.
  • Cloud Serpents are the Panda’s mounts.  Everyone can get them through dailies.
  • Farmville is in the game.  Sort of.  You can run your own farm.  Why this is in and not new models is beyond me.
  • Warlocks get big changes and new pets.  They were in dire need.
  • More mounts, less palette swaps.  Kinda tired of seeing the same dragon model everywhere.
  • 7 zones, given the progress path more similar to WotLK.  Less linear.
  • 1 arena, 2 BGs.  Ehh…they need to change the size of the BGs first.
  • Pet battles are casual. Only tracks wins, each pet can use 3 of 6 skills.  100 pets available.
  • Pets are shared across the account.  Not sure if Companions are the same though (I hope!)
  • Everyone but Goblin/Worgen can be a monk.
  • Monks are melee heavy.  Tanks, DPS and Healers need to be in melee range.  This is to counterbalance the 3 roles in one class I guess.  I am going to guess most will tank/dps as a healer in melee range is plain stupid.

There’s some good stuff coming as it seems to be a throwback to the rather open world of Vanilla WoW.  Cataclysm’s focus was split on the 1-60 world and the new stuff, with some pretty crappy side effects.  This time it’s 100% on new content so here’s hoping the actual mechanics of it all works better.

Most interesting to me though are the quality of life improvements.  There is more than the gear grind.  Pet battles, farming, pet acquisition, scenarios, challenges are all new items that should fill in the time gap for the casual-minded player.  AoE looting is a big one for me  too.  Finally, the LFR loot system should be the default group loot system for boss drops.  This will remove the Disenchant option though and therefore increase the price of enchanting as a whole.

On that last item, there’s no news on crafting, which has huge bloat right now.  Assuming the same path as previous expansions, you’ll train to 600 skill and everything from 1-575 will be vendor trash.  That’s one hell of a hurdle for alts/new players.  Maybe add some transmog gear along the road…

All in all though, it’s a decent path.  We’ll see in a few months how it pans out.

Goon

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Just got back from seeing Goon.  My face hurts from the laughs.  Other’s might disagree but I think it’s our generation’s Slapshot.

If you’ve ever played a game yourself, then you can see the authenticity in the game throughout the movie.  There’s no flying V.  There are no offsides.  Even the goon parts are reasonable expectations for a match.  And the fights, wow.  Give the director of photography a medal since it’s the sort of stuff most people wouldn’t even catch.

The film starts off pretty strong and speedy.  Quite a few solid fights in there but it’s not that part that really keeps the movie going.  The main character is just a whole pile of honest, yet stupid, nice guy.  People around him just seem to improve as the film goes along and trust me, there are very few nice guys in the film.

The middle portion bogs a bit with a love story of a sorts.  It has less bearing in the main story and the characters don’t really progress but it gives a chance for people to take a breather before the final 20 minutes.

That final 20 minute, especially the last 5 are just, wow.  My face hurt from thinking about taking those punches.  Seeing two grown men beat the crap out of each other, standing toe to toe is something that just does not exist in any other sport.  Seeing it in the movie is near identical to the mythical fights I’ve seen on the ice.

So if you’re in the mood for a good laugh, a decent hockey flick or just some big hands, take a chance on Goon.

The Death of the PC

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Remember when people said the PC was dead?  Wasn’t too long ago that most people were console die-hards and the PC market was having a heck of a time getting anything to work properly.  Here we are in 2012 and I would venture to say that the PC market is healthier than the console market.

How does something go from the edge of death to market leader?  Quite a few reasons.

  • Steam (or others) allow me access to any game without going to a store or inserting a disk
  • I use the same device for email/web as I do to game
  • Consoles cost nearly as much as a laptop nowdays
  • I can bring my laptop anywhere to game, can’t bring my console without a TV to connect to
  • PC games are cheaper and offer more personal customization (UI, controllers, etc..)
  • I can game while someone watches TV, in the same room
  • Way more content available for the PC than the consoles
  • The tablet market has pushed Flash/Mini-apps to mid/high quality
  • I can connect my PC to my entertainment system if I want, for the same/better experience
  • Miles more innovation in the PC market

There are 2 things going for consoles at the moment – compatibility and exclusives.  PCs are different in configuration so you can have conflicts.  This has improved drastically in the past few years with abstraction and better resource management.  It’s no longer a common problem as it once was.  Some consoles have exclusive games. The Wii games simply won’t work on the PC (naturally) but games like Uncharted are never going to be found elsewhere than the PS3.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that consoles are nearly dead but they have some core issues that need to be addressed.  Content distribution is number one.  Games must be streamed on the next versions of consoles – it’s not a choice.  Second, the ability for companies to make quality games must improve – by removing licensing restrictions and improving indie relations.  Third, consoles must offer all the advantages of a web-enabled PC.  Integrated web browsing, on-device recording for uploading, integrated voice chat, friends lists, wireless devices, a better dashboard.

The console war is done.  Microsoft and Sony have lost billions fighting a war between themselves while the PC and Wii picked up the scraps and made billions.  It’s time for everyone to wake up and realize that a common platform is key to victory and that CONTENT is where the real gold pile is found.

Diablo 3 Release Date

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So Diablo 3 finally has a release date, May 15th.  In exactly 2 months we get to experience Blizzard’s re-take of the dungeon crawler.  For those keeping track, it’s been 12 years (!!!) since Diablo 2 and in that time we’ve had 3 Dungeon Sieges.  Thousands of clones and re-takes with probably Torchlight being the best single player version, mechanically and I would say Sacred as the best multiplayer game thematically.

Price is 60$ US (or what, 45$ Canadian by that point?) but if you sign up for a year of WoW you get D3 for free and a guaranteed entry to the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  That’ll set you back about 120$, so you’re basically paying for 5 months of WoW, D3 and getting a free beta – which I’ve gotten into every single time anyhow.  The kicker is that MoP is coming out in less than a year – which you will have to buy – and are you going to play 6 months of that?  I don’t think I hit 2 months of Cataclysm.  Not really a deal for me.

The game looks good, the tweaked mechanics are better and Blizzard’s goal seems to be simpler this time around.  There are still some odd decisions and we live in a completely different world than 12 years ago.  At the time D2 was an MMO .  Now we have competition all over the place.  Time will tell if a loot pinata game will have longevity.

More TOR!

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One the one hand, I feel bad for BioWare since it’s quite clear that EA forced their hand to release the game for the holidays.  On the other hand, BioWare knew what they were getting into when they jumped ship.  To be a fly in that room when they agreed to sell their soul. Their games were amazing, wholely solid and wide in scope.  Maybe they just needed more capital…we’ll never know.

Back on topic.  TOR mouthpiece James Ohlen (since Georg is German and some people have trouble with his accent on this side of the ocean) did a piece with Massively.  It’s all about selling path 1.2 which is supposed to launch in March.  We’re half-way through March and it’s not on the test servers…

Some of the more interesting points I read, my comments in italics:

    • huge scope, needed to push date to test more – should have been in launch
    • test servers are empty, looking at ways to get people there – character transfers or pre-made 50s
    • surprised at the amount of level 50s – really?  lots of people hit 50 in the beta, even with multiple wipes
    • need a dungeon finder, goes in patch 1.3 – I know a lot of people who won’t bother with this game until this feature is in
    • they want to have it as an e-sport – that ranks with some of the dumbest things I have ever read
    • going all out in 2012 – yay!

The main thing here is that BW is simply admitting that their game wasn’t ready and won’t be ready for some time.  It looks like there’s a struggle of power between the devs who know there are some massive things needed and EA who just wanted money and pushed a game out the door.  If you look at the guild summit notes (10 pages of it practically) you can see that many people have the same concerns.

If you want to compete with WoW/Rift and other themeparks MMOs and charge a subscription, then you need:

  • dungeon finder
  • guild tools
  • non-combat content (achievements, pets, mounts, exploration)
  • bug-free raids
  • max level access to test servers
  • working auction house/sales platform
  • useful tradeskills
  • logical statistical distribution on gear
  • progressive, logical structure to level 50 PvE and PvP content

You don’t need 100 raids or dungeons.  You don’t need 100 PvP zones either.  You need to give people choices of what they want to run.  I saw Huttball about 90% of the time because my server was Empire dominated.  I saw Voidstar about 3 times total (out of a solid 60-70 matches) and that zone was fun.  Choices and specifically logical choices, need to be abound.

It’s not easy and BW is clearly wanting to go down that path.  Sadly, they are going down that path 3 months (in 1 week) after the game launched.  Here’s hoping patch 1.3 is enough to bring people back.

Oh, and TOR is free to play up to level 15 this weekend.