WAR vs WoW: the little guy vs economies of scale

I was going to post a comment on Grimnir's post WAR : Love-Hate with the MMO community, but it got too long so here it is instead.

WAR is a good game, and haters are always gonna hate. But on the other hand, WoW enjoys economies of scale. Also, Blizzard can throw more money at the problem and can have more and better talent on their payroll. Their salaries are competitive with similar positions in other industries --- the talent at Blizzard is no longer made up of 2nd-grade people who couldn't get work in more mainstream industries. Then there's the factor of sheer manpower. As hard as each person at Mythic works, they will struggle to compete with the multiple people Blizzard can afford to assign to the same task. This especially makes a difference for development tasks like creating new content or fixing bugs. WoW has the upper hand and it will be the constant vortex that sucks people away from niche or up-and-coming games. The pressure is on the little guys to grab and hold the attention of the gamers. Furthermore, because of the mature state that WoW is in, it is freer to innovate or make drastic changes (Cataclysm) while the new guy is still busy carving out his niche or ironing out bugs. Then again, WoW doesn't even need to innovate. MMO startups like WAR can have brilliant ideas, but WoW is in an awesome position to steal them. You can bet that whatever good idea that is well-received in WAR is already considered or will be considered for assimilation into WoW. Blizzard runs WoW like a good business and that's something good businesses can do. It just takes a few false steps from WAR and WoW will be waiting to slurp the unsubscribers into its belly.

However, it's not entirely WoW's fault. What you see is really a product of WAR's current policy. Mythic has been a shy about recruiting since the initial ruckus. Now, it's as if they want people to come to WAR, but only on their own terms and in their own time. It's a more hippie approach to running a business. Compare WAR's approach with WoW's marketing attacks and things like their super attractive recruit-a-friend program: triple XP, free game time, rewards, free summons to each other, free levelling, etc. WAR is intentionally taking it slow. They want people to discover the game by themselves and form their own opinion about it, instead of getting blasted with a huge population influx and not be able to support it; or getting everyone hyped and not being able to deliver (again). So what we see today is a result of WAR's own low and slow marketing/recruiting: many people are just peeking over the fence and forming their opinions from there.

All that aside, one thing that bothered me about WAR (being the small little-guy hippie game), was that I never really felt like I was ever rewarded for being a loyal customer. What's wrong with sending me double renown tokens in the mail every few months? Unique vanity items or dyes or trinkets to decorate my armor with? Tome unlocks? Or even some free game time? These things cost nothing to give out in the digital world, but they are meaningful as a token of gratitude saying, "Thanks for sticking with us through thick and thin; we appreciate your support". They can give bigger rewards to the people who stuck it out since the beginning, or those who have stayed subscribed for 1 year, 2 years, etc.

Mythic has made very bad management decisions in the past. They made even worse decisions when EA came into the picture and they tried to make it more like WoW. They should have just figured out what they wanted to do from the start, and focused on that. It sounds like they're finding their niche now as Bioware-Mythic and they're making better decisions, but the odds are against the little guy and...

How Square Enix should salvage FFXIV

I have it! After watching the latest FFXIV official opening cinematic, I know what Square Enix can do to salvage the garbage that is FFXIV online! Make FFXIV an anime series. That is, keep all the storytelling and CG aspects of the game but take out the interactive bits. I'd gladly pay $50-$60 for a set of FFXIV anime DVDs that feature the eye candy and the storytelling that's synonymous with FF, instead of $50 for a shitty game. I actually think they might make more money in the long run if they just released "FFXIV: the anime series", instead of "FFXIV online: the shitty game that plays like it's from the '90s".

Global Agenda: Sandstorm phase II

    Global Agenda (GA)'s expansion, Sandstorm launched today. I didn't know about this, initially. I logged into GA hoping for some quick games on my sniper Recon. First thing I noticed was that the graphics were different... and shinier. Next, PVP matches were not popping up as fast as they usually do. Then, I remembered about Sandstorm, and how they were going to add new content and "open world" maps. So, I ran through the short quest chain to gain access to the "open world" map and stepped outside.



Sadly, the "outside world" seemed to be a lowbie PVE zone. I was hoping to run into some human enemies, but unfortunately they didn't make it an open PVP zone. The only other major addition that I noticed were 10-man raid instances and a few new lowbie PVE missions. So, Sandstorm turned out to be an expansion that added more PVE and "MMO"-esque content. I might try the 10-man raids at least once, but otherwise I'll be waiting for people to return to queueing for PVP matches. One nice thing that came out of the last round of changes is that GA is completely subscription-free now.

"How to fail at producing a competitive product", by Hiromichi Tanaka

The development of Final Fantasy XIV occupies all my time, so I do not have time to play other games. I am therefore sorry to say that the last game that pleased me as a player is Final Fantasy XI.
- Hiromichi Tanaka (exerpt from the interview below)

This is like saying, "We want to build the best car in the world. No, we did not test any other cars currently in the market. But, the car that pleased me most as a driver was the last one we built."



Translation below:

"I worked on Final Fantasy XI for 8 years. I was able to collect a lot of feedback and testimonials of MMORPG players. But I also heard many moving stories from the players. A lot of things happened between them. So I had a great pleasure in working on a new MMORPG and I will be able to hear many new stories written through the game. We do not try to compete with World of Warcraft. We really want to convince the fans of Final Fantasy who have never played an MMORPG. But also show to casual gamers that MMORPGs are very exciting to play. We really hope that Final Fantasy XIV will be a good first experience for those new players.

With this title we want to bring new players to the MMORPG experience, so we spent a lot of time to manage the play time. We know that MMORPGs can consume a lot of time for players. We have therefore created the "Guild Leaves" and an armory which will allow players to use their playing time effectively. This is one of the main novelties of this Final Fantasy XIV. We really wanted to make quests less repetitive as possible for players. In Final Fantasy XI, when you were done with a quest, it was not meant to be repeated. Instead in Final Fantasy XIV we really want the players to repeat them as many times as they want. Attempts are being made to make these quests as pleasant as possible so that players do not feel bored.

The development of Final Fantasy XIV occupies all my time, so I do not have time to play other games. I am therefore sorry to say that the last game that pleased me as a player is Final Fantasy XI.

We have not yet anything in mind to the Playstation Plus members. You'll have the traditional achievments for all players, but nothing special for Playstation Plus members. "

Source

I think FFXIV would be a better product if someone with more relevant production experience was at the helm, and Tanaka had the role of Lead Designer instead of Executive Producer. I'm going to assume that FFXI purists will be happy with FFXIV. But, if you have enjoyed other games, it will be unlikely that the things you enjoyed in those games will be in FFXIV. I further speculate that despite an initial spike in subscriber numbers, the game will struggle to expand its market (especially in the first few years) and settle somewhere close to current FFXI subscriber numbers; basically migrating players from older Final Fantasy games to FFXIV.

Medieval economics

I just remembered a podcast that I heard some time ago. It's titled "Hear: Bloody, Miserable Medieval Economics" from NPR's Planet Money. It describes the harsh reality of medieval economics and includes some concepts that we may have seen in MMOs or movies (such as guilds, knights, craftspeople, professions and kings). It was a world where knights were evil, guilds were oppressive, and the black plague helped usher in the industrial revolution. It's a good listen and it definitely changed my perspective on certain things.

FFXIV alpha: not pleased

Due to the NDA I can't say much, but I'll say that it was incredibly disappointing to see very basic issues (in Alpha and with low population no less!) when the game is slated to be released in a month. It is making me suspicious of Hiromichi Tanaka's competence. I found out that he is the producer of the FFXIV game so I looked up his resume and began speculating. Most of his experience seems to be in game design, so I'm sure he's a brilliant/solid game designer. But does he have experience leading large-scale software projects? Developing massively-multiplayer games? Working on games like Chrono Cross or Seiken Densetsu does not qualify someone to develop MMOGs, since they are on a different order of complexity. So, the only real MMOG experience he has is from FFXI. Has he learned enough from FFXI?

Not having comprehensive technical expertise is not a dealbreaker for a leader, as long as he is humble and wise enough to identify what is important, recognize his shortcomings, then hire and manage the right talent to fill in the gaps. But then I wondered: what if Tanaka-san doesn't get it? Is there someone else overseeing the production of the game that has the influence to change his mind? Someone who could keep Tanaka honest or redirect the heading of the game? Since Tanaka produced FFXI and was brought back for FFXIV, I am thinking not. He's probably the best guy that Square Enix has for the job, and has even more influence in FFXIV than he did in FFXI.

But, what about his subordinates? Surely someone lower in rank can raise concerns or influence some change. I recalled Tanaka-san's resume. If his resume is any indication of how it is in the game industry, there is probably a lot of inbreeding and incest. Tanaka started out as a programmer for games, and went on to being a designer for game after game. He has little professional experience outside of the game industry, and now he's on top of the totem pole. So, if someone like Tanaka-san cannot recognize problems in the development, and everyone in the organization is similar to him, it's very likely that no one will be able to steer the ship away from any impending doom or toward better methods/technology. This would be particularly so because of the Japanese work culture.

The other concern is that Tanaka has tons of experience designing games. While this is good news for the PVE content and gameplay in FFXIV, it could be bad if he allows himself to get too distracted or consumed by the game design components that he is so fond of. This is a common pitfall for managers that have come up from the trenches --- they tend to see things from the point of view that they are most familiar with. He is a producer after all, and at some point he needs to detach himself, assume a more global stance, delegate, and give fair attention to the other important parts of the game.

I hope that I'm wrong about the FFXIV production, despite FFXIV (and FFXI under Tanaka's leadership also) having succumbed to sloppy scheduling, undefined-deadline releases, basic/fundamental issues in Alpha, and Beta testing only less than a month before release! If a real company producing Operating Systems, CAD tools, microprocessors or even online tax software were run like these game companies, they would most certainly not be successful. Somehow gaming companies are held to a different standard, or have more room for error. Please prove me wrong, Tanaka-san!

WAR: Zealot OPVP compilation now on youtube!

Some time ago, I made a Zealot PVP movie using all the footage I have collected. I finally got around to splitting it into youtube-sized chunks and fixing it so that youtube didn't eat my audio. So here it is, the last days of my Zealot before his death.

Part 1 : Early exploration (solo)

• BW + BW + SM
• WP → Engi
• SM
• BW
• Engi

Part 2 : Getting comfy (solo/duo)

• WH duel
• (Zealot + Sorc) WH + Engi
• (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH + SM
• (Zealot + Sorc) WP + Engi + WH
• evading SM + WL
• stalking the zerg
• WH + IB
• IB

Part 3 : Learning to pick fights (solo)

• Engi
• BW
• scouting, stalking the zerg, hunting stragglers

Part 4 : Waterfall battle (solo)

• IB + WL + AM + IB + rezzes

Part 5 : Double trouble (solo/duo)

• (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH
• (Zealot + Sorc) KoTBS + Engi
• Slayer + AM
• ninja stealth hiding in tree
• (Zealot + Sorc) SW + KotBS + Engi + AM + WH + SM + SW + WH
• SM

Part 6 : Baiting for fights before zone lock, getting a little more than we asked for & sweet victory (duo)

• fishing WL + WL + KotBS
• fishing WL + WL (2nd attempt)
• (Zealot + Sorc) BW → BW → BW + WH → SM + SW → BW + WL + WH + RP + Slayer

Part 7 : We just want to PVP, not PVE (duo/trio)

• (Zealot + Chosen) WP + AM + SW + BW → KotBS + RP
• (Zealot + Chosen + Sorc) SW + RP + SM + WP + KotBS

Part 8 : Against the odds (solo)

• BW + IB + WP → + WL + WP + WH
• WH → BW + WL + WP → WH
• AM + BW

Part 9 : Gear, spec & outtakes

Challenge to WAR designers: can you incentivize ORVR such that it encourages fights like the ones I found in these videos?

WAR: Zealot changes on the horizon?

May 2010 Producer's Letter: In patch 1.3.6, we want to make further improvements upon the Zealot and Runepriest careers. We wanted to give options to the healers that train a mastery path for a delivery method rather than a playstyle. When thinking of changes, we kept coming back to one thing: “HARBINGER OF DOOM” (BIG FOR EFFECT). I can already tell the Zealots are cringing and thinking, “What is that crazy person doing to my Harbinger?” The meat of the change is that Harbinger of Doom becomes an active toggle. You start in “healing mode” by default and by activating the toggle you switch to “damage mode”. This will allow Zealots to pick a Mastery path for the type of abilities that they want, without being forced to then pick again between damage and healing. While the actual effect of the toggle is still being discussed, we are leaning towards flipping magic to healing and vice versa to achieve this goal. Some of you are probably saying, “What about Runepriests? I didn’t hear him say anything about Runepriest!” The plan is to mirror this ability on the Runepriest career as well."

Did someone just say Zealot changes?

No way! That's the first time anything significant has been mentioned for the Zealot since the release of the game. Is the Harbinger of DOOM finally going to live up to its name? Will the Zealot finally play like the official class description? Will the Zealot finally be more than a gimpy wannabe Shaman? Can the Zealot excel at something other than being a boring healbot? Will the Zealot class finally be interesting? Gee golly giggity gosh darn wow!

But then again, considering Mythic's track record, I'm not holding my breath. I wish they'd ask all the unsubscribed RR 70+ Zealots why we stopped playing our class (or the game for that matter).

Fantasy Earth Zero: broken targeting kills game

As I mentioned in my last Fantasy Earth Zero (FEZ) post, it has a sloppy FPS-esque point-and-shoot system. Having such a targeting system makes the game sensitive to a variety of issues. Most important of all: lag. In FEZ, I constantly feel like I'm shooting at ghosts of the past. I shoot at my targets, expecting them to be where they appear to be, but in reality that's only where they USED to be. I often see my attack animations pass right through my targets' bodies. I can probably snipe a rabbit in Global Agenda (with its bullet travel delay) or even in America's Army (with its pseudo-realistic breathing cycles and rifle/bullet physics) more easily than trying to hit a group of people with a ranged AOE in FEZ.

Trying to hit targets in FEZ is like trying to play wack-a-mole with a soggy and crooked stick. Observe how the server blatantly ignores my attacks even though my game client clearly shows them hitting my targets (I'm firing an AOE snare "web"):



For completeness, I'll post the videos I made for how to get into PVP. First video shows the elements involved in a PVP battle:



Second video shows that getting into a battle is as easy has opening the map and selecting a territory to fight for:



And finally, my girlfriend shows me the huge boobs the game gave her toon:



I will no longer be playing FEZ. I cannot tolerate the broken "FPS-wannabe" targeting/lag issue when there's the fast-paced, action-packed, super-slick and polished Global Agenda as an alternative. It's simply unacceptable for a 4-year old game. What's ironic to me is that FEZ's differentiating aim-and-shoot system is the keystone of its failure.

Fantasy Earth Zero: initial impressions

A couple of days ago, I was browsing around for an MMORPG that emphasizes skill over grinding and gear, when I noticed a peculiar banner at the bottom of my screen:

Hmmmm... that font and those colors look oddly familiar. Is this a Final Fantasy knock-off? I did a quick search and found its wikipedia entry. It seems that it was indeed a Square Enix game. But, oddly, the official website is http://fez.gamepotusa.com. What's the deal with "Gamepot"? Wikipedia explains, "Several months after the release, Square Enix canceled the game because of severe lack of demand. The publishing rights to the game were later bought by Gamepot, where the game has enjoyed much greater success as they dropped the subscription based element present when under Square Enix's PlayOnline service, and became a "Free to Play" game." The game just arrived on US shores on January 2010. Free-to-Play you say? I'll give anything free a shot.

"Fantasy Earth Zero is a 3rd-person action-MMORPG. There is a large emphasis on PvP on a massive scale.
Sweet! I like PVP.

"One of the features of FEZ, that makes it different from most other fantasy-setting MMOs on the Free-to-Play market, is that attacks must be aimed manually and there is no auto-attack. Players manually aim at their opponent and then click the left mouse button to attack."
Hmmm... interesting. Aim to shoot? Sounds like an FPS or Global Agenda.

At this point, I had enough motivation to check the game out, so I downloaded it and explored the initial gameplay a little



I rolled a Sorcerer. The first set of mobs are melee mobs. They have an overhead strike that they telegraph with a slight pause, so it's easy to dodge them with sidesteps or simply moving away. The second set of mobs have a ranged attack that looks like a vertical cleave that travels along the ground. The cleave travels slow and is given away by wind-up animations, so it is easy to dodge too. At this time, I have a small AOE attack, and multiple single-target ranged attacks. Another thing to note about the video is that in the first set of mobs, I use the targetting system where my cursor is free to move, and in the second set of mobs, my cursor is locked to the middle of the screen (like in an FPS).

First thing that comes to mind is that it plays a whole lot better than Age of Conan (AOC). AOC had the whole sidestep thing and directional attacks too, but the following are what the differences are. In AOC, the sidesteps are useless because you cannot evade attacks with them. Here, the attacks are either telegraphed by an initial animation root, or they travel slowly to the target. So it becomes a game of timing, attacking, faking attacks and counterattacking. Furthermore, In AOC, each directional attack was a unique ability, taking up many hotkeys or hotbar slots just to be able to swing a weapon overhead, over the left shoulder, over the right shoulder, etc. This is exacerbated by the design of AOC's gameplay that gives each person many abilities. In FEZ, each class only has a small number of abilities (you select them with the mousewheel or keys 1-6), and you use the cursor to point and attack. This frees up keyboard real estate for "sidestep" keys, keeps things simple, and doesn't distract the player from the action.

As described, you do have to aim to shoot. But the game doesn't require you to be accurate. It's more like sloppy targeting. The hitboxes are pretty big, so you can hit the targets even if they're not directly under the cursor. Although, I don't know if this will change as you advance in the game.

One thing I haven't experienced yet is the PVP:
"Armies of up to 50 players, each from their own Kingdom, can go head to head in a type of war known as "Kingdom vs. Kingdom." The KvK battles are balanced so that, on the battlefield, one side will have 50 players max and the opposing side will have 50 players. KvK battles are all held on the same server."

"Kingdom battles also have many elements that are similar to a RTS game. Players "mine" crystals by crouching next to a giant crystal. After a certain number of crystals are mined, players must trade crystals with each other to get the appropriate amount of crystals they need to build a structure or summon a unit of war. Units of war are essentially "Summons" like in Final Fantasy games, but the Wraith and the Giant require structures to be built before they can be summoned. When a player character summons a unit, they assume the form of the summon and directly control its action. Buildings can be built on the battlefield and each has its own purpose. Obelisks are used to capture enemy territory. Gates of Hades are used to summon Wraiths. War Workshops are used to summon Giants. Arrow Towers fire arrows at the opposing side."

It looks like PVP involves waging war with neighboring territories and then coordinating buildings and summoned units, in addition to personal combat. I haven't figured out how this part of the game works, so I have no comments here.

As a summary: the graphics are kinda kooky, but that's Final Fantasy style for you. That's fine by me since I don't really care about the style of the visuals of a game, as long as they look polished. What I really care about is the gameplay. The music is Final Fantasy-esque too. The combat feels pretty slick, and I can see what kind of experience they're going for. I really want to PVP, so this game's next "success or failure barrier" to me is how easy it is to get into the PVP.

Age of Conan free trial review: as fun as reading a dictionary but way more annoying

Some of my guildies brought up Age of Conan (AOC) as a game to try to keep us busy temporarily. I looked it up, and was curious about its complex combat system and its M for Mature rating. Fatalities! Blood and gore! I really wanted a game that rewarded me with some blood as I hacked and slashed. I'm not a kid anymore and I feel entitled to play a game that has more than the flashing lights and rainbows that all the MMORPGs have for animations these days. Besides, AOC's expansion was getting released so it seemed like a good time to try it (already out for some time, bug fixes, new content, etc).

I decided against buying a copy of the game and downloaded the free trial instead. I FRAPSed my adventures through level 7 and annotated them with my comments:



I am glad I did not pay any money for that garbage. There was not a strain of fun content to lead me along from lvl 1. The game's combat plays horribly and the interfaces are clunky. I simply could not get past level 7. I was confused that the game could be so shitty, so I went to my guild forums to ask for the opinions of some people who played it more:

I'm having trouble getting started... I'm level 6 now and I've been using the same 2 abilities for hours. PVE is making me cry and nothing seems to happen when I queue for that scenario thing on the top left. I keep looking at my XP bar every half an hour and it barely seems to move. When does this game get fun?

Also, the positional/directional melee combat thing seemed like a neat idea at first at first but now it just seems clunky and a waste of 3 hotbar slots. Especially with the double tap evasion bullshit. You have to start evading 3 seconds before your enemy actually does anything for it to work, which makes me feel as nimble as a hippo. Sometimes I double tap and nothing happens! Then there's the stupid shields. That feels so clunky too.

I received some helpful replies, but none reignited any desire to play. They confirmed what I thought, and that it was the game and not just me. I'm pasting some of their comments here for objectivity:

The double taps aren't really to evade individual attacks. They are more to quickly change position if you are getting surrounded. I used them all the time on my guardian to keep enemies in front of my shield, but you are right they are not very effective at dodging attacks. They do give you short buffs though after you do them. If I remember correctly going left or right gives you a small evasion buff, going backwards gives a defensive buff, and going forwards gives a damage buff.

I always found the directional attacks to be fun. At least up until high levels where the chains were 4 and 5 moves long, but I hear they have fixed that.

The shield system is just plain dumb, it was simply a failure. Most people just ignored it. The only time I could see it be useful is in PvE when a boss mob telegraphs some nasty attack. My suggestion is don't worry about it.

and:

To me it was cool at first, then I found out why Q and E weren't strafe by default and it was because apparently they were also 2 more wasted hotkeys. I must admit I never got high enough for it to matter but uh, well i was like WTF am I going to do I already have like 700 keybindings I'm used to and work fine in any other mmo.

That and wtf was with a Hard Coded auto run button??? no matter what I did I had to turn mouse 4 and 5 into god damn random keystrokes so I could use them again.did they change any of that stuff?

As for Tortage (the starting city) it took me like... 10 hours to get out of there? I was going rather inefficiently for awhile but I was still kind of pissed it took me 10 hours especially since I had Skrigg basically hand guiding me for a large portion of it.

This is another one of those promising games that reeks of mismanagement to me. I can see some ideas that have glimpses of brilliance, but the implementation/execution is a 5-star failure.

Global Agenda: Introducing... Assault

I recently got my Assault to max level. This was a class I initially thought I'd never play, but after levelling up a little and unlocking some skills and weapons, I appreciated the damage and the point-and-shoot gameplay of the class. Of all the classes, the Assault plays the most like a traditional FPS: damage damage damage (bombs, guns, rocket/grenade launchers). You have the option to spec for defense so you can take a lot of punishment and be easy to heal, but I specced mine for straight up RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MAX SPLASH DAMAGE and equipped the Magma-"Noob"-Lance rocket launcher.

The MagmaNoobLance does a lot of direct damage, some splash damage, and ignites the target with a DOT. In addition to damage, the other nice thing about the rocket launcher is mobility --- find the target, squeeze trigger, and move on while the rocket is in the air. The disadvantages of speccing the Assault for damage are that you're squishy, and it consumes a lot of power. In a few instances in the video below, I had insufficient power to kill the target under my crosshair. Also, my spec is more for solo play, and there are specs that synergize with other classes (like the Medic) better.

I'm not as spry as I used to be and can't really "air-rocket" in this game (yet... :P), but the Assault is fun to log into sometimes for a change, and turn my brain off and pew pew.

Robotics: fun with turrets (and drones)

After spending more time with each class, I'm starting to like Robotics a little more than the rest. The set of equipment I've settled into has: Personal turret, Hornet and Grizzly. The personal turret is a deployable with a short cooldown, short range and can fire 180 degrees around it with 100% accuracy. The hornet and grizzly are drones that automatically attack targets in range. Turrets stay alive until they are destroyed or another turret is built, while drones only appear for a short time.

In the past, I've either focused on turrets and stations and had a more bunkered style of play, or I've been super mobile, flying around and dropping drones to do all the dirty work. But lately, I have found that it's actually very effective to use both turrets and drones together. I've even ditched all my defensive abilities like shield wall and healing station.

My first priority is usually to find a super sweet spot to set up my turret. A well-placed turret can really ruin someone's day, and can be the difference that wins or loses games. The super sweet spot could be somewhere just outside everyone's field of view, or somewhere people are not paying attention to. In "escort the payload" missions, this can be in a nice blind spot around the corner that people are going to walk by, where they don't realize the turret until they're dead. However, once the turret is up, it's only a matter of time until it kills enough people and people start to notice and try to take it down. This is where I used to have troubles in the past. Someone would enter the "deadzone" behind the turret's arc of fire and try to destroy my turret. I've tried to spec for rifle damage but I couldn't kill my target before my turret died. I also tried speccing for max repair power, but I couldn't heal my turret through the damage or they'd stop attacking my turret and start attacking me instead. Then, with my turret down, my killing power would drop drastically for a while and I would have lost control over an area.

This is where the drones come in. By using drones with turrets, there are no longer any deadzones. Anyone trying to destroy my turret at close range will be welcomed into a 360-degree meatgrinder. I can also set up nice angles by using the turrets with the drones, by being in two places at once. E.g. a turret can pressure people to hide behind a rock, and I can then drop a drone behind the rock. The drones work well to take out enemy turrets too.

The following video starts of with me setting up a turret in a blind spot right outside the enemy starting point. It slaughters people one after another as they fly out. The mission is "payload escort" mission. I was on the defending team, so our goal was to make sure that all the bars in the top right of the screen don't turn red. We actually get pushed back all the way to the last checkpoint, but we stood our ground and repelled the payload. On my hotbar, C is Hornet, X is Grizzly and E is Turret.



The next video shows robo gameplay on other missions. The video ends with a short clip of me and another robo working together in a Payload mission to set up a nasty bunker in a stairwell to stop the payload. He also deployed a sensor, so you may notice that many stealthers that tried to sneak in to blow stuff up got busted and shredded.

Aion stun defense: case study of a bad C&C patch

Somehow I still get Aion newsletters, even though I have unsubscribed. I am always curious about game design changes, so I read it anyway. The newsletter talked about the introduction of a new 'stun defense' ability that will be introduced for 'balance'. I will first paste what they have to say about it, and then I will talk about how this is an example of an overzealous designer (Chris "Kinslon" Hager) trying to fix a problem by not completely understanding the crux of the problem, doing too much, missing the mark, ultimately not really fixing anything at all and creating more problems elsewhere. This happened time and time again in WAR and I wish I had documented every counter-productive patch and hotfix. But I guess better late than never:

Aquilanius: How exactly will the stun defense skills work?
Kinslon: You can purchase the Remove Shock skill from your character's appropriate skill trainer (preceptor). Once your character has learned the skill you've purchased, if your character becomes stunned in combat, Remove Shock becomes available as a chain skill that you can use to remove the stun and increase your character's resistance to stun, knockback, and similar conditions for 7 seconds. At later levels, class-specific skills that you can also learn will act as chain skills that let you go on the offensive in addition to the basic abilities of Remove Shock.

Aquilanius: What purpose does this stun defense have in overall class balance?
Kinslon: With each update in an MMO, the game designers need to rebalance the game's classes as players progress in skill and learn tactics that allow them to optimize (and sometimes overly optimize) specific class abilities. In the Aion 1.9 update, every class can now counteract and counterattack stun blocks to a degree. This strengthens the balance of all of Aion's classes. Future updates will continue to balance and shape each class, allowing players to shift tactics as new and different skills are introduced, and 1.9 is no exception.

First of all, it's good that the designers are aware that there is a problem with some classes (e.g., a well-geared Assassin can burst someone down from stealth while his target is stunned/disabled the entire time). But the problem with the stun defense is that they plan to give it to everyone. Here's a example to illustrate why this is a bad idea using Spiritmaster vs Chanters, since I am familiar with them. The only ranged stun a Chanter has is Soul Strike. It's a 4 sec stun with a 12 sec cooldown. If Spiritmasters are given this "blanket" stun defense ability, Chanters are pretty much f*cked. They just took away the only ranged stun a Chanter has, and the only way for a Chanter to get into melee range or kite a Spiritmaster. To make matters worse, Soul Strike doesn't even stun 100% of the time, AND pretty much all the CC a Chanter has is in the form of stuns! Might as well rename the 'Remove Shock' ability to 'F*ck you Chanters, LOL'.

Besides, I'm not even sure if this will fix the original problem of classes like the Assassin. Okay, so you can hit the button and be stun-free for 7 seconds. But within that 7 seconds, Assassins also can cast a buff to resist 2 magical attacks (this includes CCs). If you do wipe that buff off, there's no way you can CC him either. Snare/root him and the game already allows people to remove that with a potion. And now, he's buffed to be unstunnable as well because the new stun defense grants everyone the 7-second stun immunity. This change only marginally improves the problem scenarios, and hurts everyone else that didn't have a problem with stuns to begin with.

What they should have done instead, was specifically fix the problem classes, instead of taking this lazy one-size-fits-all fix.

Aion: analysis of the last grind that broke my back

Some of you may have noticed that I no longer post Aion videos. I have retired my Spiritmaster a few months ago and moved on to Global Agenda. Aion has some unique characteristics that I believe will prevent it from ever being successful in the western market. Sure it's grindy, but many people are okay with grindy. More than that, there is something unique about its grindiness that I have been wanting to talk about but haven't gotten a chance to (until now). I will attempt to paint a picture of Aion below, with key issues bolded.

Those who haven't played Aion may not appreciate what I'm talking about without some more background information about Aion's "endgame", "PvPvE" and "the grind". In summary, it takes a while to get to max level (50). In the time it took me to get to Level 50 in Aion, I could have gotten 3-4 characters to max level in Warhammer, and maybe 1-2 characters to max level in WoW (or 6 characters via the Recruit-a-Friend bonuses) .

The grinding in Aion is split in to what I think of as "grind buckets". Every couple of levels, you receive quests or get access to certain zones that place your character in a particular "grind bucket". The first grind bucket rewards you with Boots that give you +20% run speed. This is a tremendous advantage and necessary for PVP. You can either get your 20% speed boots via PVE by killing a thousand elite NPCs, or by doing Abyss/PvPvE stuff to get enough Abyss points to spend on the PVP version. The next couple of grind buckets involve grinding to obtain player abilities or grinding a few thousand more PVE kills to claim a nice gear reward. But almost invariably, every grind bucket requires you to spend money. Killing NPCs alone isn't enough --- the game often requires that you spend money crafting or buying some expensive item to turn in along with whatever crap you've been picking up from the NPCs.

Everyone in the same "grind bucket" may group up and keep each other company through the grind, to get whatever reward is associated with the bucket. The first few buckets may take days to weeks of playing time, while the last few buckets take months. When people graduate from one grind bucket to move on to the next, they usually never want to revisit the previous grind bucket. If you miss the train, or don't grind as fast as everyone else, you will be left behind and on your own. Throughout the game, people are constantly left behind in grind buckets, alienated and ultimately demotivated to unsubscribe. This may not be as apparent in games like Warhammer or WoW, because the grind buckets aren't as severe.

It was the "end game" grind bucket that killed me. You had to do things like kill thousands of silly NPCs. You had to wait for spawns all around the world at different times of day (there was a chance that they did not appear). You had to level a profession to Expert, costing insane amounts of money if you started the wrong profession (once you've started the expert quest on one profession, the game didn't let you change) and it involved standing in the crafting area for hours, just clicking on the 'craft' button. Then, you had to pass the Expert crafting exam by crafting a rare item that costs a lot of money or rare materials with a chance to fail. Many people's banks were bled dry by this point. But it's not over yet. The pinnacle of this chain's grind was collecting rare materials that came mostly from PVP zones. The drop rate was something like < 5% per NPC at a contested PVP zone, and you needed more than a 100 of them. For reference, I was getting one of them every couple of hours of playing. If you tried to cooperate with friends to farm them, you wouldn't necessarily be faster since you would have to split the drops with everyone. Needless to say they were expensive, so it was either grind them or grind something else to get enough money to buy them. But there's more. After you've collected all your rare items, you don't simply turn them in for your reward. You need to craft something with all of the materials, and THEN turn in the crafted item. What crushed my soul was the fact that you had a chance to fail at crafting the final item. I believe it was a 20% chance to succeed, 80% chance to fail.

Now that is ridiculous. Most people can tolerate a grind if there is a certain end in sight. If the end is certain, you know that any time you put in will bring you one step closer to your reward, and that you will eventually get the reward. It was only a matter of time. But once you place a random number generator at the end, it's demoralizing. If you are lucky, you could get it on your first try. But since it's random and each try is independent, you could be unlucky and fail 100 times. There is also a probability (even if it's slim) that you fail 1000 times. I wanted to PVP, not battle a random number generator.

Needless to say, I only focused on one character in Aion, which is a shame because one of the fun things of an MMORPG is trying out different classes/careers.

All this wouldn't make as much of a difference if Skill > Gear. If Skill > Gear, there will be less pressure to grind, and less reason for activities like botting and RMT to flourish. Unfortunately, Aion rewards grinders and encourages Gear > Skill. In fact, Gear in Aion is allowed to negate Skill so much that it's not even worth trying to fight sometimes because the chance of winning is almost zero. For example, the set bonus from completing the final epic gear quest bumps up magic resist so much, that someone else who has not completed the quest and has not received the full set bonuses has a slim chance of landing any magical abilities. Another example: if you are an Assassin with good gear, you can pretty much sneak up on someone, open up with some Combos that lead into stuns or a disable, and kill even tank classes --- all within the brief period of time that the player is disabled. You literally cannot do a single thing. Well... except go back to grinding.

But this points to another problem. Once you fall behind the gear race in Aion, it's almost impossible to catch up. The reason for this is that the final gear grind buckets requires "grinding" in a PVP zone. But since Gear > Skill, once you are outgeared, you will most probably be roflstomped in the PVP zones, and any PVP-zone-related quests will be inhibited. You will be unable to advance, while your opponents are free to extend their lead, causing the gear gap to widen exponentially. Not surprisingly, my guildie tells me that this is exactly what has happened on Zikel --- the entire "Core" (the highest-level PVP zone in the Abyss) is dominated by Elyos and Asmodians cannot do anything about it.

Ultimately, it wasn't just the grind. As much as I loved my Spiritmaster and PVP, the PVP environment in Aion wasn't that great. There are only a few ways you could PVP in Aion:

a) Rift into enemy territory
This required you to teleport to the enemy zone via a "rift" that would spawn at a random location in the friendly zone. At max level, you probably only had one rift that you could enter through every hour or so. The nice thing about rifting is that the zones are no-fly zones; and you don't have to suffer Aion's broken flight combat. The cons about this is that the rifts are not always available, and you need to pay for a resurrection kisk to resurrect in the enemy zone. Without a kisk deployed, deaths send you back to your friendly zone and you'll have to try to find a working rift again.

b) Go to the Abyss
This is an open PVP zone where everyone is flying most of the time. I typically stay away from this zone since flight combat sucks in Aion. This is also where all the artifacts and fortresses are, but I stay away from them too since they encourage zergy PVP.

c) Dredgion
Every now and then, action in the Abyss unlocks the Dredgion 'scenario'. This is an instance where you have human players on opposing factions fighting for similar PVE objectives. I like to play this whenever I can. The downside is you can only play one Dredgion game each time it becomes available.

I think the only reason I kept playing for as long as I did was because I enjoyed the Spiritmaster class. I still feel that they did a good job with core PVP combat (all else being equal). It was the world they wrapped around it, flight, their flavor of grinding, and how they let gear rule the world that sucked.

Final Fantasy XIV: PVE > PVP?

If you asked me a year or two ago, I would have scoffed at the idea of playing a Final Fantasy game. But the way games have been going lately, I am expecting a PVE-centric game like Final Fantasy to be a nice change of pace, even for the PVP fan that I am. My rationale is as follows.

Fewer design constraints
If PVP is excluded from the picture, many constraints are removed from the equation, and there is less pressure for the dev team to get things right. I.e., there are fewer ways for the dev team to screw up. This allows them to focus on other parts of the game instead of tinkering with and breaking this and that (optimization is a more difficult problem than adding PVE content and an amateur dev team will typically fail).

It's okay if classes are not balanced
In a PVE game, classes do not have to be balanced for the game to be healthy. As long as each class is fun to whoever plays it, the game wins. In a PVE game, no one will complain if a rogue class is able to stealth indefinitely, if a glass cannon class has no way to get out of stuns, if a healing class can also do decent damage; or about something more detailed like "melee class M has 3 CCs while ranged class R only has 2 counter-CCs".

Everyone is allowed to be "overpowered"
In a PVP game, if one class is ever allowed to 1-shot another class by design, many people would be disappointed. It's like the phrase from The Incredibles, "when everyone's super, no one will be". In a PVP game, no matter how powerful your abilities may seem on paper, you can bet that your opponents will have equally powerful abilities. You will never get the feeling of superiority that you thought you would, even as you hurl fireballs from your finger tips and shoot lightning from your ass. This is because a PVP game will never allow you to "overpower" your opponent. You are never supposed to fight 10 enemies by yourself and expect to win. In a PVE game, however, your opponents are allowed to be lesser beings, and you are allowed to feel... "super". Isn't this why people play RPGs in the first place? To feel awesome?

No gear grind?
MMORPGs typically offer a gear progression and reward players with better gear after a 'grind'. This necessitates a grind in order to be competitive in PVP. The people who don't (or cannot) grind as much will always be at a disadvantage to the people who grind more. Thus, an invisible "bar" is set by how much effort everyone in the game is willing to grind (or pay for someone else to grind). If you fall below this bar, you will almost certainly have a worse gaming experience than everyone above the bar. Also, note that the bar always rises and never falls, since everyone is always upgrading their gear. Leave for a week-long vacation? Get bogged down by RL commitments? The invisible bar would have inched higher and you are a little less powerful than you used to be, relative to everyone else. In a PVE game however, no one suffers for the benefit of another person's enjoyment. The "bar" would have been set by the game designers as a prerequisite to PVE content, but it is static. Fall a little behind because of RL? That's alright --- the content is waiting for you exactly where you left off --- you're not going to suddenly get facerolled by noobs who grinded more than you.

What I'm looking out for now is either a PVE game, or a PVP game where skill > gear. I'm definitely going to check out FFXIV since my girlfriend's a big fan. We'll find out if I'm right about a PVE-centric game being a nice change of pace. They're supposedly upgrading their PVP experience, but I'm actually hoping that they stick to their bread-and-butter and keep it PVE, for the reasons above.

Recon: fun with mines

Lately, one of my favorite moves in Global Agenda as a Recon is to herd people into mines. Note that mines will not automatically detonate if they're dropped under someone; they will only detonate if someone walks over them. I like to drop mines where I think my targets will run toward, then try to freak them out by swinging my big sword in their face and bait them to trip on my mines.

For those of you who don't play Global Agenda, you can spot mines by the tiny column of light they emit from the ground. They are bound to the 'X' key on my hotbar, which is located at the bottom left of the screen. Kills are displayed as blue "You defeated ..." or "You assisted ..." messages in the middle of the screen. Hope you enjoy these "mine fun" moments as much as I did :)

Global Agenda early start gameplay videos

This weekend was Global Agenda's early start. Pre-order customers were given the opportunity to get all their characters to level 10. Although there are 4 classes, I only got 3 to level 10 because the Assault class just wasn't that appealing to me. Gameplay videos below.

Recon: sneaky stealth ninja that can spec for melee attacks, long range attacks, or bombs. The best class to take out key enemy support units like turrets and respawn stations.



Robotics: robomaster who can summon force fields, turrets, healing stations & drones. Playing this class reminded me of the board game 'Go' (which I'm not good at).



Medic: healer who shoots out green beams of healing goodness to allies (also has healing bombs and AOEs). A medic can also spec for poisons, debuffs and DOT damage.

"Here comes a new challenger": Global Agenda

Global Agenda (GA) releases on Friday! I hadn't heard about this game until a week or two ago when people started talking about it on our guild forums. A bunch of us pre-ordered and checked out the open Beta last week. In short, the game is a blast and highly addictive. I found myself wanting to play game after game until it was way past my bedtime, and suffered the following days as my gaming had eaten into my working time.

Although it's labelled as a MMOFPS, it's not really an RPG. It's an over-the-shoulder team-centric FPS, with MMO and RTS elements. You can play any of 4 classes (Assault, Recon, Medic, Robotics) and each class is customizable through gear and skill trees. You get skill points to spend in your skill trees and gear options are automatically unlocked by levelling up. As far as I can tell, there aren't any rare gear upgrades that you can grind for to get an advantage. So after getting to max level, everyone is on an equal playing field and player skill is what makes all the difference.

From the website: "Create, customize, and develop multiple agent characters, complementing your FPS skills with accessible RPG-style progression. Unlock weaponry and cuttingedge devices including jetpacks, grenade launchers, mines, deployable turrets, stealth suits, holographic decoys,robotic droids and HUNDREDS of others." One of the fun things about the game is that everyone has Jetpacks. The jetpack "flight" in GA (short bursts, acceleration, deceleration, gravity, seamless integration with combat) feels and plays better than Aion's flight (constant velocity, flight potion chain-chugging, wonky flying class/combat dynamics, freefall distance limit).

The game uses the Unreal engine, so the graphics are pretty shitty by today's standards. I almost feel cheated for paying $40-$50 for something that looks like a 5-year old game. But, they're good enough to get the point across. It was absolutely refreshing to be able to pew pew without having to grind for anything (think Guild Wars), and not get 1-shot by some no-life kid with the best PVE gear in the game.

Everyone plays on the same server. All the fights in the game are instanced, and players fight for control of cells on a grid that represents "the world". However, the cells are not independent of each other, and players will often have to coordinate attacks on multiple cells simultaneously --- an action in one cell can affect another cell. While the instancing sounds weird for anyone used to open-PVP, it can make sense if done right. Consider this: in Warhammer, the people in the front and rear of a Keep do not fight together, although they work toward the same goal. The only thing that's missing in GA is that there is no world to 'roam' around in. It's just non-stop, instance after instance (PVE or PVP) of pewpewing (FPS-style) from level 1 to level 50 (and subsequently, world domination). Gear can be reconfigured at the starting area of each instance, but skills can only be redistributed at the "lobby".

I am probably going to be a Recon and Medic. Heck, what does it matter! You level so fast in GA that everyone will probably have max-level characters in each class. I'm stoked! I haven't played many FPS games lately even though that was what I played a ton of as a kid (Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Counterstrike, America's Army, ...). Ah how I missed the pew pews.

Duoing Spiritmaster & Gladiator

A guildie went rifting to Heiron and I went to join him. I haven't really duelled Gladiators so I didn't know much about how they worked. I imagine it was the same for the Gladiator with Spiritmasters as well, so it was a good learning experience for us. A video with snippets of the trip is below. I edited out the fights where we only ran into 1 opponent, so each encounter should show at least 2 people on the screen. Looking back at it, our synergy was raw. There were many missed opportunities and a couple of deaths that could have been wins. I need to tighten down my CCs on multiple targets and interleave more damage assists with the CCs. We also need to get comfortable with maneuvering an enemy mob around as a duo. There were a couple of stutters and miscommunications that got us rubberbanding between each other, resulting in one of us getting CC'd and killed. But as time goes by, I expect that we'd understand the strengths and limitations of each other's class better, and get a good feel for our individual playstyles. As for duo potential, Gladiator-Spiritmaster seems pretty solid and something I would run again. The Gladiator brings the damage the SM lacks, and the SM fills in all the CC holes in the Gladiator arsenal.

Comments: at the end of the video, the Gladiator received the debuff that reveals his location to every Elyos in the zone. We were eventually chased by a mob of Elyos, which we tried to evade by slipping into an elite area. The idea is that the elite NPCs would weed out or discourage lower-level players from following us. This worked, and the Elyos mob thinned out to 2 people. We killed the Chanter, but I was a little lax on the CCs and the Templar managed to escape back to his camp, which my Gladiator guildie bloodlusted into :)

Spiritmaster vs Ranger tactics callibration (videos)

Consumables were not used in the following videos (one of the Rangers requested this and I wanted to see what effect it had). Also, for some reason the Rangers did not start most of the duels stealthed (must be some honor thing!). However, I included a video that shows the advantage they get from stealth.

Bread and butter: dispel buffs, regain control:



Spirit Substitution: I started a few fights without the Stone Skin shield, to play around with Spirit Substitution:



The following video shows how much a Spiritmaster's damage drops when the pet is taken out of combat. I could not kill one Ranger even with a chain of 2 Fears. The video also demonstrates how a Ranger can use Sleep Arrow during Stun → Fear to neutralize the Fear chain, therby creating an opportunity to recover:



Next, Stealth. In the first fight, I tried a trick of casting an AOE DOT on my spirit. The second fight shows the ridiculous burst damage potential of a Ranger from a string of crits. I tried to recover using my instant fear, but I missed the 2nd Fear and was killed before Spirit Substitution took effect.



Bonus vid: a Chanter mis-timing his abilities, allowing for easy counters: Dispel, Dispel, DOT, DOT, Dispel Recovery Spell, wait for Soul Strike, Stun → Fear:

Spiritmaster vs Ranger tactics callibration

     

The potential of the Ranger class at end-game has been a mystery to me for a while now. I finally got around to getting a guildie Ranger to help me understand the class better. I caught him late at night, so his reaction times were not the best in the videos. But I just wanted to figure out what Rangers could or could not do, to be able to tell what they're thinking when they engage an enemy target. While we were duelling, another Ranger spectator got interested in duelling too so I had the chance to callibrate my tactics against two different Rangers.

Rangers rely heavily on crits to do damage. When rangers don't crit, they struggle to even break through a Spiritmaster's Stoneskin shield. On the other hand, a string of crits can drop my HP down to 20% in seconds. Since they have to stack extreme amounts of crit for their damage, they often have to sacrifice HP. It will usually not be until they soft cap their crit % that they stack more HP. This makes them the lowest HP class in the game, and extremely gear dependent to be able to get their nasty crit damage, while still having a decent amount of HP.

Because of these factors, fights with Rangers are very quick. Chain fears are neither necessary, nor natural to set up. Rangers have a tremendous amount of burst damage but low HP. So, from the SM point of view, the fight is won or lost depending on whether or not the SM has his instant fear up, or if the SM can regain control after being jumped and chain-CCed by the Ranger. If the SM can regain control, the SM does not have to go through many rotations to empty the Ranger's HP bar.

From the point of view of the Ranger, the fight requires a lot of effort. The Ranger can always quickly drop the SM's life into the danger zone from the initial burst and CCs from stealth. However, the Ranger's success hinges on countering all the SM's attempts to regain control after the intial burst. Unfortunately, the SM has many tricks. If the Ranger thinks that he can't kill the SM after the initial burst, it's probably best to make an exit, med up (dispel, shield, heal), restealth, and try again.

Key Spiritmaster factors:

• Enough HP to survive the initial burst
• Save healing potion for Silence. It's okay to be rooted or snared. While it's advantageous for a Ranger to snare the SM in range, it is imperative that the SM pots out of Silence. Otherwise, the Ranger can easily lock down and kill the SM with stuns/sleep/silence.
• Stone Shock → Fear is bread and butter for regaining control
• The Ranger's self-buffs boost Ranger damage tremendously and must be dispelled. Also, watch out for Nature's Resolve and Run Speed buffs.
• Wind pet's stun is useful, although it's easier to disable a melee pet
• Shackle of Vulnerability, Body Root (melee disarm) and Silence
• If instant fear is up, it will be sad times for the Ranger. Erosion DOT (to eat the resist buff) → instant fear → root → 2 fears.
• Spirit Substitution (transfer damage to pet)
• Stack DOTs and maintain pet pressure

Key Ranger factors:

• Pop Nature's Resolve (resist 1 magical attack) while dealing the stun/silence chain.
  Th SM will probably pot out of Silence. Regardless, SMs will desperately try to regain control with CCs after the initial burst and chain CCs. Having Nature's Resolve waiting for the SM after he comes out of CCs will absorb a trigger happy noob's instant fear.
• Stay out of range of Fear Shriek (15m). Don't give the SM a free Fear Shriek. Force him to Stone Shock → Fear.
• Save Sleep Arrow to hit the SM between Stone Shock → Fear (just like Chanters and Soul Strike). This prevents the SM from being able to chain Fears. If the Ranger survives the DOTs while Feared, he can break away, recollect himself and hit the SM again later.
• Interrupt the 2.5s Fear
• Always take advantage of the initial burst from Stealth
• Keep consumables handy (shield, HP pot, dispel DOTs pot).
  BUT, do not use them all in the beginning --- they can be easily dispelled. Instead, use them to recover from Fear, or during tactical retreats.
• If the SM pops Spirit Substitution, separate the SM and the pet by 10m or wait it out.
• Take the pet out of the picture if possible (with the 1 min root, or kill it)

Gotchas:

• Rangers cannot counter Stone Shock → Fear with Nature's Resolve. The Fear will register as completed and hit the Ranger, and the buff will only resist the next attack.
• The SM cannot break the root on the pet by using Spirit Absorption.

PVE: a look at the failure of game design and how to make it better

  

If you think that PVE is more fun than PVP, feel free to stop reading now. But for everyone else who is a PVP fan and thinks that PVE sucks in comparison, it's not your fault. It's the fault of the game designers. I believe that PVE can be fun, provided the game designers gave a shit and actually put in an honest effort for once.

The typical path of PVE combat design failure:

1. The single "Boss" paradigm is the single most destructive concept to PVE in MMORPGs.
   This automatically makes a "Boss" fight a many-vs-one fight --- the "many" being the group, and the "one" being the PVE boss. For the sake of discussion, let's say that the group consists of 6 human players.
2. Boss fights are required to be challenging. But in order to be challenging in a many-vs-one fight, the "one" must be much stronger than each individual human player. Consider what the group brings to the fight: 6 players who can do damage, take damage, heal and/or CC. How can one "boss" counter the damage of the group? Or the healing? How can it prevent being chain-CC'd? To address these issues, game designers continue making bad decisions and travel further down the path of failure:
3. Silly game design decision: "We can't have the boss chain-CC'd the entire fight. That'd be too easy. So let's make the boss immune to all CCs."
   CCs are the spice of tactical combat, and opens up a gameplay of interactive attacking, defending, timing and counterattacking. CCs also serve to provide some balance between classes. When game designers decide to make an NPC immune to all CCs, that is a cop-out that nullifies a significant chunk of every class' abilities. This means that every healer will only mash heal/defense abilities and every damage-dealer will mash damage abilities. The secondary effect is that no one has to move. In PVP, squishies kite with CCs and non-squishies chase with counter-CCs. By removing CCs from the equation, everyone simply stands still and mashes buttons. Designers: if your attempt to make a fight 'epic' includes removing CCs from the fight, you are doing it wrong.
4. Another silly game design decision: "With 6 people nuking the boss, he will take alot of damage. But yet, we can't let him go down quick since it's a boss fight. So, let's give the boss a billion hitpoints, and perhaps toss in some uninterruptable heals or defensive buffs to unnecessarily draw out the fight even more.
   In PVP, the direct counter to damage is healing. However, the boss cannot be given the same healing abilities as regular players, since the designers already made the boss immune to CCs. If the boss could chain heal but not be uninterruptable, the boss will never die. So the typical scenario is to give the boss a billion HP to draw the facerolling encounter out.
5. "Aggro", "Enmity" or "Hate"
   What happens in a PVE encounter? A tank runs up to the boss, and "tanks" it. He then holds "hate", and the boss focuses on the tank the entire fight, and no one else.
   What happens in PVP? The complete opposite. Everyone runs by and ignores the tank and goes for higher-priority targets. The tank is not able to get someone's attention by simply spamming "taunt" abilities. Instead, the tank is always running, using positioning, infiltrating the enemy lines, using tactical retreats, and using timely CC abilities to be a threat to the opposing group... all while supporting his own group defensively. The concept of "Aggro", along with CC immunity nullifies everything that's interesting about being a "tank" class. Like everyone else, the tank just stands there in front of the boss, "tanking" it.

The above issues are what I think the key failures of current PVE design are. They are responsible for boring, stationary button-mashing fights, as well as the dichotomy of PVE and PVP gear. Why can't it be better? Why won't game designers try harder?

For instance:

• Allow CCs back in the boss encounter.
• Lower the HP of the NPCs.
• Give the boss some helpers. Give him a healer, a nuker, etc. Allow them to be CC'd.
• Have the healer heal and require the players to counter the heals.
• Allow the NPCs to CC the players too.
• Have every class use every ability in his arsenal to win.
• Then, remove the concept of "aggro" or "hate". The biggest threat to the "boss" should be the one who gets hate.
• If the healer is healing so well that the "boss" can't do any damage, the "boss" should go after the healer.
• The tank should not be able to "taunt" the boss back. CCs are required since they are now back in the picture, just like in PVP.
• If a nuker is hurting the "boss" badly, the "boss" should target the nuker.
• Allow the "boss" to perform "tactical retreats". If he's hurt, he should CC the players and kite away, to buy some time to heal up. It is up to the players to counter him.

PVE doesn't have to be boring, and it does not have to suck. Come on designers! Try harder! The door is wide open for you to deliver the world's first engaging PVE experience.

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 3

Checkmate... and a revelation of where WAR's "RVR" fails.

We now had a positional advantage. With the Order defense committed to the west keep, the defense at BOs *should* be much lighter. But we didn't have much time left now. We only had a few minutes before the zone was captured. As we were grouping up at the south warcamp, we noticed some Destro flying in. REINFORCEMENTS! Apparently most of the Destro were in other zones, waiting for them to lock. That was why we were outnumbered here in Thunder Mountain. We spammed region chat to tell everyone to hit C. We didn't have much time left to try anything fancy.

With about 1 minute left on Zone Domination, we managed to take and hold C.

It looked like the Order force was demoralized --- BO after BO was taken easily, followed by the Keeps. Dv was nowhere to be seen, and there was little Order resistance left in the zone. As expected, Dv probably took his zerglings to PVE elsewhere.

After all that fighting, we congratulated everyone and thanked them for their support while they PVE'd the rest of the zone. It would probably be one of the most epic battles we would have experienced in WAR, from the scrappy fighting to the winning against the odds and the final push with a minute left on the clock. But that got a few of us thinking. What did we get from the few hours of fighting? What were we hustling for? To chase f***ing timers! We spent a few hours trying to stop some silly "timers" from handing the zone over to Order. One of my buddies commented that it would have been more beneficial to not defend the zone and let the zone flip so that we could work on a fresh zone. He was right. And even if we lost the next zone and Order unlocked our Fortress, Fortress defense was much easier than offense, and it would have been free RP and gear for us if we let Order flip the zones to a Fortress. We virtually got nothing for working so hard to defend the zone. Just piddly honor from the few player kills we got, and the measly 500 RP for the 2 or 3 times we flipped a BO.

The people who got rewarded more were the Destro in the other zones, who PVE'd the other zones with little resistance, then received rewards for locking the zone. On the other hand the Destro who were furiously fighting to prevent Thunder Mountain from being locked got little, compared to the effort that was put in. Those who were rewarded were also the Order warbands that we demoralized at Thunder Mountain, who went to PVE in a fresh unlocked Zone instead of staying where the action was and fighting to retake Thunder Mountain.

And these are some reasons why WAR's RVR system fails. The reward/motivation system is screwed up. PVEers are rewarded; people who run away from the fight are rewarded. Players are not rewarded for confronting each other in the battlefield and fighting. And I shall refrain myself from going on a rant about the silly "Zone Domination timer" bandaid.

That was the last time I led a warband, or joined one for that matter. That was also when I started giving up on WAR's rubbish PVE endgame and decided to look for PVP fun elsewhere. It was just too zergy, and everyone's motivations and the game's reward system were all messed up. Although I had fun leading a guerilla warband against the zerg, when it comes down to PVP, what I really want to do is fight. I didn't want to spam heals in a zerg. I didn't want to PVE, or try to motivate zerglings who would rather PVE objectives because it was the most rewarding thing to do. I didn't want to PVE in order to unlock even more PVE: more doors to destroy and more horrendously laggy/crashy, population-capped PVE encounters. NO THANKS!

Anyway, possibly to come in the distant future: commentaries on each RVR zone, based on my roaming experiences. This will include my favorite hunting spots, and my opinion on the unique features of each zone from a RVR perspective. It'll be chance for me to relive some of my fondest moments in Failhammer, when I had to break away from what the game was designed for to find some fun for myself.

Memories like these remind me that no one really leaves Warhammer because they do not like it. I feel that the majority of the people who left the game saw tremendous potential in the game and really wanted to like it, despite all its shortcomings. It's a shame that for whatever reason, the Mythic team kept making bad management and design decisions, and could not deliver or turn things around.

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 2

A and C are easily defendable by one force, since there's a speedy route connecting the two. B on the other hand, would not be defended unless a defensive force was explicitly placed there. We rode north around the west road as sneakily as we could, and tried to hit B. There was a warband just sitting in the cave waiting for us! It was incredibly hard to cap a BO with a choke point separating us, since our people were not able to get past the choke point effectively enough, and the defenders were continuously getting rezzed. Despite some intense fighting, we could not make any progress. Even when we could get through, we could not take the BO NPCs down. Furthermore, the people who died inside were out of range for a rez. Damn, the number of Order in the zone kept climbing.

The order zerg would have been cautious by then. They knew what kind of numbers we had and they knew we were trying hard to stop them. So we needed to try something different. Something sneaky. We decided to send 3 groups to A, and my original Scenario group would try to take D. The groups sent to A would be the distraction and they would try to catch as much attention as they could, for as long as they could. This was to try to drain their numbers toward the west. and hopefully leave D weak. We waited on the PVE road by D as long as we could, until we saw that the rest of our warband was struggling. Then, we charged at D. To our surprise, we found a warband sitting outside the BO, waiting. They looked like they had no intention to react to anything --- they were just content to sit there at the BO until the zone locked. Our group hit the Order wall and died. I asked for a report of how many people reacted to their attack on A. They said that they were close to getting it, but the numbers were even greater now.

Our estimates now were about 1 Order warband at each BO, vs our 1 Destro warband. Time was running out.

Change of plans. Since the warbands of Order were just going to sit at the BOs, we had to do something else. No sense hitting them head on where they have the advantage. Our final attempt to save the zone was to hit the west keep. Keeps take longer to capture than BOs, but with a warband we could at least take the outer door down, and pressure the Order zergs. If the outer door was down, Order would be forced to divert their numbers to defend the keep, or we could easily bust down the inner and kill the Keep Lord. This would also tie up some Order at the Keep since the outer door would stay down for a few minutes after it is destroyed.

When we arrived at the west Keep, there were a few defenders. They looked mostly like AFK'ers and scouts. Good. We wanted all the Order in the zone to know that we were slamming the Keep hard. Our top priority was to bring the outer door down. We burned through it quick. People in our warband kept screaming that more Order was coming to defend. GOOD! Our next priority was to repel the Order as long as we could, and we tried our best to take the Keep. Or at least, make Order think that we really wanted the keep. We killed many who were trying to enter the Keep by defending all the outer Keep entrances, while focusing most of our firepower on the inner door. Throughout the fight, I tried to keep motivating the warband, and telling them that this is a win-win situation for us.

If they didn't try to stop us, we'd have the Keep within minutes. Capturing the Keep would put 2 hours back on the clock. If they did try to stop us, I reminded everyone that it's okay if we wiped. We just had to take the front door down. If we wiped, it was actually a good thing because our whole warband would deathwarp to our warcamp, and we'd have a positional advantage. I felt that it was important for the whole warband to be in the same mindset for this, and to not have a morale hit after wiping at the keep. I knew I had a core of good people who understood this, so for the most part we should still have a substantial warband --- even if the zerglings got demoralized by the loss, or if they got tired of running around and left the warband.

We kept wiping packs of zerglings who tried to come defend the keep. Eventually the Order zergs started to feel the heat --- they responded with full force and wiped us at the west keep. We tried to get everyone to suicide as fast as they could, to regroup at the warcamp.

Continue to Part 3...

Recollections of a battle for Thunder Mountain: Part 1

Nostalgia time! This is the story of the battle of one Destruction warband vs over three Order warbands in Thunder Mountain; once upon a time in Warhammer...

After some Scenarios, my group noticed that Thunder Mountain was completely owned by Order and the Zone Domination Timer was ticking down. I believe we started with a group of 1 Chosen, 2 Sorcs and 1 Zealot (myself). We decided to go check it out --- maybe flip a BO to reset the timer or try to help retake the zone, BO by BO. We arrived at the Destro warcamp in the South.

C is the closest to the warcamp, so we decided to go have a quick look to see what we were going up against. There were a couple of groups defending. This is the typical situation when a zone is close to locking, since C is closest to the warcamp, and it is the most susceptible to attacks from people flying in to defend the zone. I usually estimate the numbers at C to represent 80% of the people in the zone. 

So, we decided to hit A, assuming that our group could take 20% of whatever was left in the zone. We were right. We met them with even numbers, but out-PVP'ed them and capped the BO despite having to fight the players and the BO NPCs. This put 30 minutes back up on the Zone Domination timer. Now we waited to see if we could fend off attackers long enough for the BO to lock. Unfortunately, the groups at A came to defend it, along with the people we killed and sent back to their warcamp. Our small group was wiped.

There is a quick direct route via bridges from C to A, but even so, the response from C to A was surprisingly quick. That suggested that there was some organization here by the Order in the zone. I noticed a familiar name from the last fight: Dv (full name omitted). That instantly gave me an idea of what we were going to be up against. Dv tends to lead a bunch of nobodies to PVE zones. His warbands are always zergy, and they always overcommit their resources. He also shies away from confrontation and relies on numbers rather than skill. Dv also always tries to be 'smart' by attacking what appears to be the weakest target. And thus, he is always predictable.

But it was clear now that we needed more numbers. We needed more than 4 people to be able to be more of a threat and to capture/defend objectives more effectively. By now, our group started to refer their friends. They wanted to join in the fight. We expanded the group to a private warband. I wanted to keep it private because I wanted to have a bunch of solid people we could count on. I didn't have the patience to motivate zerglings who would start whining if we started running around too much, or who would rather sit at a BO to get the extra 500 RP.

We barely filled 2 groups, and we hit C from our warcamp. As expected, the greedy Order zerglings were waiting for A to flip for their 500 RP and C was lightly defended. We flipped C, put 30 minutes back on the clock, but we were wiped by a bigger zerg than what we had seen before. This meant that more Order PVE zerglings were trickling into the zone to try to collect their zone lock rewards. Despite the loss, this confirmed that we had an advantage. The warbands we were facing were very zergy. It looked like they would have communication problems for complicated directions, and we could easily out-maneuver them. It helped that our warband had good players and that all they needed to know was the plan, and they would each know how to execute it to each of their class' best abilities. From all our fights with the zerg, we also knew we could out-PVP them.

People in region chat were asking if there was any Destro organization in the zone. Someone mentioned my warband. I guessed that at that point we could use more numbers. If the new additions could keep up it'd be great, but otherwise it's ok if they left the warband to go PVE elsewhere. I reluctantly opened my warband to the public and assigned assistants to help arrange groups.

Continue to Part 2...