Interesting news out of DCUO this week - the next patch will add a set of buffs to the game's group-finder that removes the need for tanks, healers, and controllers in the game's four-man content. Tankless groups will take less damage, healer-less groups will gain passive health regen, and controller-less groups will regain power. If there was any question about which role is not scarce in-game, there is no mention of a damage buff for groups with no DPS.
My post title may be a bit misleading. For the moment, SOE plans to continue to require group roles in the game's eight-man raid content. They've even taken a page from Blizzard's book, with a new "novice" difficulty setting for raids. I can't imagine that this requirement will stand in the long run.
The team is making this move because we're looking at a playerbase that solo DPS'es their way to the level cap, double-DPS'es their way though the endgame duo content, and will now quadruple-zerg their way through the group content, spending their hundreds of emblems on DPS gear that cannot be used to heal, tank, or control. Nothing in MMO history suggests that the easier raids will be any more successful in converting solo players to group roles. If anything, the system raises the bar for new players who WANT to try the roles, by moving the playerbase further down the gear grind and skill curve - I can definitely imagine being told to switch to DPS mode because the group will move faster with higher DPS and automated healing.
Before dismissing this move as desperation by an MMO that was stuck with weird console demographics, consider the context. NPC companions are spreading across the genre, raising thorny issues about how to avoid having them become more attractive than a live player. So is scaling content like public quests, rifts, and whatever Blizzard is calling their new feature, designed around the reality that players are unwilling to tank and heal in sufficient numbers to sustain the old school holy trinity. Most games are building in multiple roles to most or all of their classes (before shooting themselves in the foot by requiring double the gear grind to support these roles) but DPS queues remain high.
If Blizzard announced that this feature was in for Pandaria's launch, the only shock would be that they acted so quickly. Perhaps modern MMO's have too much invested in the old model to change now, but at this point I'd be very surprised if the traditional holy trinity is implemented in Titan.
If this is the deathknell of the holy trinity model of MMO's, it's vaguely ironic to have the company that made Everquest wielding the fatal dagger.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Will Raid Tombs For Story
I continued to work on my PS3 backlog this weekend with the first game in the Tomb Raider Trilogy, Tomb Raider: Legend. Of the three games included on the disc, Legend receives the worst reviews, and I can understand why. My experience has been that I have repeatedly gone to a walkthrough only to learn that I had correctly solved a puzzle or boss mechanic, only to be unable to execute the solution due to inconsistent controls. However, the story from Legend continues on into the subsequent Underworld (and is relatively amusing besides), so I wanted to play through the game anyway.
My solution to this problem, despite being a long-time gamer with experience in this series, was to set the game to "easy" difficulty. This effectively removes almost all challenge from the game's combat - mashing on the "fire two handguns at once" button eventually kills most enemies, who deal limited damage - and with it most of the potential frustration. What's left are the jumping puzzles - which are usually at least fun to watch and puzzle out - and the story scenes.
When I played through Batman: Arkham City, earlier this month, I was willing to tackle the game on normal difficulty because I expected the proven stealth gameplay would make it worth the effort. I'm considering replaying the more challenging "new game plus" because the gameplay delivered. With Tomb Raider - and WoW's raid finder - I'm not convinced that it has.
Balancing story and game engagement
I posted about the rise of this type of cinematic stoytelling in games - primarily single player games - nearly a year and a half ago. (Amusingly, I wrote that I wouldn't be first in line for SWTOR, not knowing that it was still over a year from release, and for once I got one prediction correct.) Since then we're seeing more of this type of storytelling in the MMO scene, whether in SWTOR's famous dialog trees or WoW's increasingly chatty plot-heavy dungeons.
We've always had some story in our MMO's - LOTRO has interspersed lore cut scenes with quests and dungeons since its launch, and many MMO's historically kept their main lore and storylines locked at the end of exclusive raid content - but it's becoming both more prevalent and more accessible. The question is whether the levels of engagement in both storyline and gameplay have kept pace.
I can see tolerating a lengthy dialog as a way to celebrate toppling an end-of-expansion boss after the proverbial (or literal) 400 wipes, but I can also see it getting frustrating to have every encounter - especially easier ones such as WoW's dungeon and raid finder - punctuated with NPC's who repeat the same chatter week after week. Likewise, I can see it being irritating for players who actually WANT to observe the story in an era of chain-pulling to the next encounter.
It may be possible for an MMO to launch with such sheer quantity of story that it can get by on selling players access to replay the game - if anyone pulls this off, it will be SWTOR. For everyone else, who is still trying to sell players on using repeatable content (whether through a subscription or microtransaction consumables), I wonder if the increased focus on a story - which is generally less repeatable - is a distraction from attempts to convert players to the core gameplay.
My solution to this problem, despite being a long-time gamer with experience in this series, was to set the game to "easy" difficulty. This effectively removes almost all challenge from the game's combat - mashing on the "fire two handguns at once" button eventually kills most enemies, who deal limited damage - and with it most of the potential frustration. What's left are the jumping puzzles - which are usually at least fun to watch and puzzle out - and the story scenes.
When I played through Batman: Arkham City, earlier this month, I was willing to tackle the game on normal difficulty because I expected the proven stealth gameplay would make it worth the effort. I'm considering replaying the more challenging "new game plus" because the gameplay delivered. With Tomb Raider - and WoW's raid finder - I'm not convinced that it has.
Balancing story and game engagement
I posted about the rise of this type of cinematic stoytelling in games - primarily single player games - nearly a year and a half ago. (Amusingly, I wrote that I wouldn't be first in line for SWTOR, not knowing that it was still over a year from release, and for once I got one prediction correct.) Since then we're seeing more of this type of storytelling in the MMO scene, whether in SWTOR's famous dialog trees or WoW's increasingly chatty plot-heavy dungeons.
We've always had some story in our MMO's - LOTRO has interspersed lore cut scenes with quests and dungeons since its launch, and many MMO's historically kept their main lore and storylines locked at the end of exclusive raid content - but it's becoming both more prevalent and more accessible. The question is whether the levels of engagement in both storyline and gameplay have kept pace.
I can see tolerating a lengthy dialog as a way to celebrate toppling an end-of-expansion boss after the proverbial (or literal) 400 wipes, but I can also see it getting frustrating to have every encounter - especially easier ones such as WoW's dungeon and raid finder - punctuated with NPC's who repeat the same chatter week after week. Likewise, I can see it being irritating for players who actually WANT to observe the story in an era of chain-pulling to the next encounter.
It may be possible for an MMO to launch with such sheer quantity of story that it can get by on selling players access to replay the game - if anyone pulls this off, it will be SWTOR. For everyone else, who is still trying to sell players on using repeatable content (whether through a subscription or microtransaction consumables), I wonder if the increased focus on a story - which is generally less repeatable - is a distraction from attempts to convert players to the core gameplay.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Triumph of the Plain-er Horse
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| Telaran riding school requires that you stick your right elbow out to the side just so. |
This was actually the first time in recent memory that I actually went farming for the purpose of collecting gold/plat. Stacks of crafting materials from most harvesting nodes in Shimmersand sell for something between 3-10 Plat on Byrial Guardian side, so this was not especially painful. While I don't think I have really done this since about 2007 (the first epic flying mount in WoW, launch era LOTRO), I didn't really mind it. If anything, having a "primary" goal of traveling the zone to harvest more cash actually made it easier for me to convince myself that I might as well finish the quests that require killing the mobs guarding my loot. This is something that has gotten lost in more recent MMO's, where it feels like I usually have all the cash I need as I need it.
Since I haven't capped out any endgame factions yet, my two choices were the weird two-tailed lion-cat thing that Guardians can get in Sanctum, or a horse from the scholar faction that I apparently capped through world events the week the game launched. I decided to go with the plain-er option because my CE turtle mount and the raptor mount I got from a world event both scale to the speed of my fastest mount for when I want to look more exotic. On the plus side, I now have three separate appearances for my top riding speed. On the down side, most faction mounts are set to cost the full 125 plat if I ever reach the required faction level. Perhaps I will eventually be awash in plat, but for the moment this approach (which World of Warcraft fixed with riding skill back in 2006) would seem to discourage additional mount purchases.
Anyway, I'm now free to roam Telara at a noticeably faster speed. This impacts travel times for everything - quests and especially zone events - in a way that makes me wonder if someone (myself or Trion) made a mistake in designing this in such a way that I was hobbling around at the lower speed until now. Now that I have the upgrade, getting such a large boost in one shot is rewarding, but this was definitely something that was harming my enjoyment of the game up through this point.
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| Telaran Riding Tip: Lean to one side or the other so you can see around the giant thing on your horse's head. |
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Looting the Raid Finder
I took my third trip through the WoW Raid Finder this week, and I guess I must have been statistically due. I won a glove token - which I gave away to another player when I won the ilvl 390 gloves off of Deathwing's back (don't ask) - a pair of shoulder pads, and enough Valor points to pick up the belt off the Valor vendor. My PVE set now no longer has inappropriate items in it (e.g. PVP or spirit gear that was enough of an upgrade to be worth equipping despite suboptimal stats). A few observations:
- For the most part, heroic 5-mans are now no more than a means to Valor points, as I no longer need any of the loot. The only minor exception is a caster off-hand that I might want if I ended up winning and using the spell dagger from Deathwing (almost all off-hands are itemized with spirit for healers).
- Unless I move on to normal/heroic mode raiding, most of these items are things that I will not replace until the expansion. Moreover, it doesn't feel like there are many choices - the challenge with effectively replacing all of the gear on all the characters in the game as many as four times in a single patch (the new 5-man dungeons, followed by raid finder, regular, and heroic mode of the Deathwing raid) is that there just isn't room for variety.
- Blizzard intentionally did not include weapons on the regular bosses in the easy raid finder mode (which generally offers loot that's half a tier above five-mans). The final Deathwing encounter does offer weapons, which are a full tier above what you get in five-mans, but they seem oddly situational. The two choices for mages are a staff which spends a lot of its budget on a proc that increases haste for some of your group members and a dagger with an uncontrollable AOE proc - something which should give pause to all but the most trigger-happy of DPS. (If you want to use the dagger anyway, you need to go back to 5-mans for the aforementioned off-hand to carry with it.)
- A second trinket is one area where I'm kind of lacking, and at the mercy of the random number generator. There are three trinkets a mage can use in the raid finder, but one has another automatic AOE proc. These are also hard to get because DPS melee shamen and druids (along with caster shamen, druids, shadow priests, and mages/warlocks) are allowed to roll need on these caster DPS-focused items, resulting in a lot of rolls when one does drop.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
If you can't say something nice?
There are a few things I could blog about today. I'm strangely not excited about writing any of them. I suppose when you've been at this for long enough, there are relatively fewer things that you can write that you haven't written in the past and/or don't expect to be covering repeatedly as the news in question gets closer to the present?
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
On the plus side, I suppose the upshot to having a blog that's nearly four years old is that it gets easier to just shrug, /punt, and go hit the raidfinder or something.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
SOE on "Free to Play, Your Way"
"We've introduce[d?] non-recurring passes into EverQuest II, which have been really popular for some of the newer players that aren't quite as committed yet. It's a great on-boarding tool so that people can feel like they can buy a one-time pass using virtual currency, see if they like it, and then see if they can move on to a recurring fee"In the early days of the EQ2X beta, devs expressed concerns that existing subscribers would cancel if allowed to buy their way out of all the restrictions on non-subscribing accounts. They are not wrong to fear this - I would suggest that SOE's competitors, such as DDO and LOTRO, have ended up with models in which almost all players will pay less in the long run by paying for unlocks rather than subscribing.
- Laura Naviaux, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing at Sony Online Entertainment, in an interview with ZAM
However, the results have consistently left me feeling that SOE never intended for the non-subscription model to be a viable and attractive alternative to the subscription. For all the studio's talk about how they want to give the consumer flexibility, both EQ2 and DCUO intentionally retain restrictions that non-subscribers cannot lift in any way other than subscribing. Their model has always felt like players were expected - as close to required as the studio could get away with - to "move on" to the old monthly fee if they wanted to continue playing.
I just was not expecting to have my impression confirmed by their marketing chief.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Rift At 50
Telhamat, my Rift Cleric, finally hit level 50 this week. In addition to a welcome back weekend, Trion handed out 3 days of game time to anyone who has an account as compensation for changing their passwords after a hacking incident late last year. As a result, of all these freebies, I was able to reach the game's level cap without any additional paid time beyond the initial month - certainly no grounds to complain about the value I got for that purchase a year ago.
Soso Solo
I have soloed characters to the level caps in WoW, EQ2, DCUO, LOTRO (though I have yet to catch up with the latest increase), and now Rift, so I'd suggest that I have a fair amount of experience with solo PVE play. Unfortunately, I can't recommend Rift all that highly in this department.
There's no way for Trion to balance content around all possibilities in the soul system, but any of the four DPS Cleric souls paired with 10 points in Justicar can chain-pull 3 mobs at a time with limited to no downtime or consumables. (I didn't even realize there were drinks I was supposed to be purchasing and consuming until someone mentioned how many they consumed on a dungeon run.) The game's zones are extremely lengthy and linear, so there's limited opportunity to push the envelope on better optimized solo builds by attempting more challenging content.
Meanwhile, the game's exp curve is inexplicably weighted in favor of killing mobs over completing quests. If you have rested exp, you will get significantly more experience for killing 10 rats than for riding halfway across a wide zone to turn in the quest to kill the 10 rats. Quest reward gear is generally much worse than what you can get at the same level from zergable Rift events. Overall, zones are pretty, quests and lore are reasonably well written, but overall the long and non-challenging quest grind feels the opposite of rewarding. Nothing about what I've seen makes me excited to work on the endgame solo daily quests.
The group flexibility niche?
My seldom-active Rift characters happen to be parked in Ferrel's raiding guild, Iniquity. Having seen my level 50 achievement notice in guild chat earlier that evening, the guild invited me on a farming run that very night. The group had some empty slots in an excursion back to farm the old River of Souls instance for raid currency etc, and they figured there would be unclaimed loot that could be handed to a blogger/tourist.
The random loot table obliged, and I ended up with a belt, a pair of gloves, and a 2-handed hammer. (I also snagged a level 50 purple helm with currency from a past world event). Perhaps more valuable was a hint of what exactly this game has that other games do not. Through the soul system, Rift players have unprecedented flexibility to find something they can do with the players they have, rather than attempting to find players to satisfy the needs of the content.
Healer has to sign off? No problem, the tank will go heals and a DPS will switch to tank mode. Freshly dinged 50 who can't hit anything due to lack of gear? At least I can switch to a healing role and contribute somehow, since heals can't miss. Not enough players to run this zone? There's a smaller one that still has some tokens and loot, or the even less structured outdoor content.
None of these ideas are original or even that impactful individually. Taken collectively, though, I'm starting to see why this game seems to draw the older-school crowd from the days when MMO's were more of an activity than a game.
Going forward
I'm actually not done with Rift just yet - I happened to snag a very good deal on some game time earlier this month. It appears that the biggest thing I need to do with this time is to stop trying to solo. I have more fun in this game when I play as a healer than as a DPS (perhaps in part because I have built a Purifier that heals a lot like my WoW mage does DPS). Trion will take my money as a solo MMO tourist, but they will never hold my attention in that role because that's just not the direction they have chosen to take their game.
In a lot of ways, Rift is the exact opposite of the direction I'm going as a player - subscription in an era of non-subscription options, group-friendly when that does not fit my schedule. The fact that the game makes me at least interested in trying it anyway suggests that they're doing something right.
Soso Solo
I have soloed characters to the level caps in WoW, EQ2, DCUO, LOTRO (though I have yet to catch up with the latest increase), and now Rift, so I'd suggest that I have a fair amount of experience with solo PVE play. Unfortunately, I can't recommend Rift all that highly in this department.
There's no way for Trion to balance content around all possibilities in the soul system, but any of the four DPS Cleric souls paired with 10 points in Justicar can chain-pull 3 mobs at a time with limited to no downtime or consumables. (I didn't even realize there were drinks I was supposed to be purchasing and consuming until someone mentioned how many they consumed on a dungeon run.) The game's zones are extremely lengthy and linear, so there's limited opportunity to push the envelope on better optimized solo builds by attempting more challenging content.
Meanwhile, the game's exp curve is inexplicably weighted in favor of killing mobs over completing quests. If you have rested exp, you will get significantly more experience for killing 10 rats than for riding halfway across a wide zone to turn in the quest to kill the 10 rats. Quest reward gear is generally much worse than what you can get at the same level from zergable Rift events. Overall, zones are pretty, quests and lore are reasonably well written, but overall the long and non-challenging quest grind feels the opposite of rewarding. Nothing about what I've seen makes me excited to work on the endgame solo daily quests.
The group flexibility niche?
My seldom-active Rift characters happen to be parked in Ferrel's raiding guild, Iniquity. Having seen my level 50 achievement notice in guild chat earlier that evening, the guild invited me on a farming run that very night. The group had some empty slots in an excursion back to farm the old River of Souls instance for raid currency etc, and they figured there would be unclaimed loot that could be handed to a blogger/tourist.
 |
| Telhamat, with her new hammer |
Healer has to sign off? No problem, the tank will go heals and a DPS will switch to tank mode. Freshly dinged 50 who can't hit anything due to lack of gear? At least I can switch to a healing role and contribute somehow, since heals can't miss. Not enough players to run this zone? There's a smaller one that still has some tokens and loot, or the even less structured outdoor content.
None of these ideas are original or even that impactful individually. Taken collectively, though, I'm starting to see why this game seems to draw the older-school crowd from the days when MMO's were more of an activity than a game.
Going forward
I'm actually not done with Rift just yet - I happened to snag a very good deal on some game time earlier this month. It appears that the biggest thing I need to do with this time is to stop trying to solo. I have more fun in this game when I play as a healer than as a DPS (perhaps in part because I have built a Purifier that heals a lot like my WoW mage does DPS). Trion will take my money as a solo MMO tourist, but they will never hold my attention in that role because that's just not the direction they have chosen to take their game.
In a lot of ways, Rift is the exact opposite of the direction I'm going as a player - subscription in an era of non-subscription options, group-friendly when that does not fit my schedule. The fact that the game makes me at least interested in trying it anyway suggests that they're doing something right.
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