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.