The Joy of Doing It “Wrong”

Tags

gameplay, gaming, group, guild wars, guild wars 2, gw2, MMO, mmorpg, path of fire, play, pve, solo

Below is a picture of my build in Guild Wars 2.

I’m running a Guardian right now who wades into battle almost exclusively with a mace and a shield. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve gotten this build optimized, but damn if it isn’t optimized for me.

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Crucial, Complete Crafting

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artcraft, crafter, crafting, crowfall, MMO, mmo crafting, mmorpg, mmorpg crafting, pve, pvp, sandbox

For the past couple of days, I’ve been granting a lot of my attention to Crowfall, the in-development “throne war MMO” by ArtCraft. It’s one of the two open sandbox PvP MMOs that have me actually anxious to play despite being an assumed gankbox hellscape, and most of that excitement is spawned from the way Crowfall approaches crafting.

Yes, I’m getting excited by a UI element. If that bores you, I can’t help that.

The Convenience Store MMO

Tags

convenience, focus, game design, MMO, mmo design, pve, pvp

Convenience stores are kind of awesome, right? Where else can you get fuel for your car, band-aids, headache medicine, copious amounts of beef jerky, beer and cigarettes all at the same place? And within a reasonable amount of time to boot? They’re pretty fantastic. But the design model of a convenience store has its flaws, and those flaws are inherent in MMO’s that follow the same sort of model.

Blaugust Day 28 – That’s Not Heroism

Tags

chosen one, content, hero, heroism, narrative, pve, quest, side quest

This post idea kind of sprang to mind in addition to the post I was making about sidequests.  Specifically, not only are they useless fluff that don’t feel like a grand quest, but they also don’t make me feel like a great hero.  I mean, I don’t know how many epic poems Homer would have written about someone who killed five bulls and harvested their spleens.

“I can totally string that out to 50 stanzas, easily.”

Granted, I’m the only one bristling with weapons that approaches the “common folk” to help them with dangers that would very likely kill them in the attempt…but that sort of misses the idea.

Blaugust Day 27 – Side Dishes

Tags

main quest, pve, questing, side dish, side quest, story, swtor, themepark, xiv, xp

This post was prompted by Syp’s excellent post about SWTOR, but I was otherwise diverted from posting this by other, shinier topics that came to mind.

“Dooood….”

In it, he discussed his feelings on the planetary missions of SWTOR and how the 12x Experience Boost for current subscribers rendered all of that work obsolete.  Is that such a bad thing, though?  In my mind, it isn’t.  And SWTOR isn’t the only one that could benefit from this design idea.

PvE, Landmark, Disappointment

Tags

combat system, control scheme, everquest next, landmark, MMO, pve, sandbox, soe

I’d been fanboying over Landmark really hard of recent.  It was my personal best game of 2014.  It was the game that made me look at the sandbox MMO in a way that didn’t involve cocaine addict-levels of jittery paranoia.  It was something that both made me realize I suck at creating things in a 3D environment and also made me feel okay with that.  It brought a lot of great things to me this year.

So, of course I was excited for the PvE Patch.  I mean, it literally says on the front “This is a patch for your playstyle, Wolfy.  Here.  Please, drink deep of our flavor and enjoy.”

“Here, let me pour that for you.”

So imagine, then, my great disappointment when this patch turned out to not only to be a spectacular disappointment, but something that has shaken my faith in this game and the future of EverQuest Next.

I’ll need to elaborate, of course.  Combat has been a thing since the PvP patch in August.  I already knew that the combat model that was installed felt like an oily walrus trying to give people high fives with a sword.  But it didn’t really bother me, because PvP is a game mode that I don’t take very seriously, and so the complete ridiculousness of the whole affair didn’t have a great effect.  Granted, I was a bit worried, but I also wasn’t going to write it all off until I saw how it operated in a PvE environment.

Welp, I’ve had some time experiencing this in a PvE environment, and it’s not whimsical anymore.  It’s awful.

There’s been about two adjustments to combat–one major one that changed the weapon effects and output, and one that arrived with this patch that introduced new weapons and a variety of “keywords” that bring effects when you link pieces of gear together with the same keyword.  These are all neat ideas, but none of it matters if things still make you feel like a desperate LARPer.

“I’m trained in the Spastic Lemur style”

Combat is controlled in an over-the-shoulder third-person view, with mouselook aiming, and your left mouse, right mouse and E key the default attack keys for whatever weapon you’re holding.  The hitboxes are incredibly unforgiving.  Attacks do not flow well from one to the next.  Some attack animations actually stop you from moving for no reason, even after you’ve finished your swing.  Positioning doesn’t appear to provide any advantage other than ability to hide behind objects.  Enemy attacks are hard to pick out.  Aiming is loose, erratic and uncontrolled.

In short, it’s the hellspawn of DC Universe Online and Planetside 2, thrown at your eyes like an Alien Facehugger, and with about the same sort of horrible results.

Sorry pal.

The other big ticket item was the final version of Caves.  Before these were just small, randomly generated little areas that went down a few feet, had some random treasure and greater yield of minerals.  Now they have up to five different layers, head down to the core of the island, and have higher yields of treasure, minerals and monsters that get rarer and more awesome the deeper you go!  Sounds bitchin’ right?

NOPE!  What you get instead is a small hub area that literally is laid out the same, accessible only through the central teleporter crystal thing.  If you wanna explore the other, deeper more varied layers? You have to equip a mineral finding tool, use a Pulverizer machine, and DIG TO THE SHIT YOURSELF.  And it’s actually by design!  Dave Georgeson himself actually has said so!!

Add to that a crafting system that has been expanded into an even more numbing, boring grind, and…well…you can perhaps understand how things are becoming very frustrating for me in Landmark…and incredibly worried for  Neo-Norrath.

“What’s Next”? Intense disappointment.

I understand that this is perhaps an early build of things.  Maybe things can be improved upon.  But I doubt it.  Crafting hasn’t seen any actual touch-up in a year.  Combat hasn’t been changed in months.  It would appear that this is about as good as its going to get, and that makes me incredibly ill.

This game just does. Not. Work with a twitch combat model…and I say that as someone who actually prefers active combat.  It’s one of the best parts of WildStar.  It’s what also made me sick of DCUO and what is making me sick of Landmark.  SOE does not know how to build this stuff in-house and make it feel good…at least not with current examples.  I don’t see how this can be tightened up by simple virtue of the fact that they have yet to create an active combat system that doesn’t make you appear like you’re in a poorly animated slap fight.

I have laid out my concerns on the appropriate board.  I have rescinded my money.  I even tried to get a refund of my Founder’s Pack purchase.  That’s how strongly I feel about this whole thing.  I genuinely think they’re about to giddily crash into a reef…and that has me very upset, because this game could make sandbox MMOs the new normal thing…but as it stands now?  It will kill all potential for this genre.  This is a squandered opportunity in the making–a train wreck happening before my very eyes in slow motion, and I can’t help but watch in teary-eyed horror.

I hope I can be proven wrong.  I want to be.  But early looks right now are telling me that this is not going to change very much.  And with full attention going over to Next in the coming new year, I have had my faith in this game series utterly dashed to the floor.

Frayed Fan Edges

Tags

fanrage, fans, gamers, haters, MMO, pve, pvp, trolls

Most of my blogs try to accentuate the positive, because there’s more than enough negativity fluttering around like butterflies made of fart out there.  That said, this sorta thing can be daunting as hell.  Whoever said that it takes more muscles to make a frown than to make a smile probably never worked in customer service.  Or never tried to adore a thing despite all the negativity.  Or was on some next-level medication that let you taste auras.  So, with that said, I’m gonna lay out why being a positive fan of gaming is probably the most exhausting thing since watching a reality show.

“This feels completely normal!!”

I suppose I should maybe elaborate on what I’m going on about and what prompted this whole blog post this week.  One of my favorite games, WildStar, has been beset by a whole slew of bad news, from layoffs to exit interviews blasting management to outright cancelling Christmas.  It’s been a trying time enjoying Nexus.  Even more trying when the majority of the circles one inhabits are giddily digging the title’s grave.

This is just a log on a whole bonfire of crap that I’ve been exposed to.  Excellent blog-fu’ist J3w3l made a great post a couple days ago about PvP and bad behaviour.  It prompted a series of generally civil but nonetheless heated opinions in the comments area, which then prompted a rather stern and stupendously snarly response in defense of PvP playstyle and its inner culture…which I can’t say isn’t uncalled for.  It might not have been an appropriate response, but I’ve been precisely there myself before.

Granted, this is all stuff that is easily, completely under my control to limit.  The problem is twofold.  One, the very point of MMOs, even if I find PUG’ing terrifying and horrible, is the sense of community.  Community that plays amongst as well as with each other.  Community that forms little groups and guilds and cliques and events.  Comment sections are that too–a microcosm of hobbyists.  So it’s hard not to want to engage and maybe make some connections there.

Two…I’m probably a complete idiot.

…possibly.

So when some people appear to conspire and rail against your chosen form of game or your chosen playstyle or even you fucking gaming platform of choice…it’s difficult to not be affected by that a little bit.  Even the most aloof and shoulder-shruggingly chill among us has a nerve that can be tapped.  Repeated exposure to the bullshit of others will get through.  We’re all porous in that regard.

It all seems to stem from this continual tribe-creating mentality that has been in gaming ever since the NES and Master System were things that people could buy.  What started as a matter of two companies vying for marketshare exploded into this camp-building clusterfuck where the value of people’s very lives depended on their choice of Plastic TV Gamer Box.  The Console Wars were birthed, and they have since spawned to further perpetuate more tribe creation.

So too is it with MMO games.

I can’t tell you how often I have very nearly felt like a sort of scumbag because I enjoy WildStar.  It’s absolutely insane, I know, believe me….but it’s happened.  On more than one occasion.  You start to think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with your synapses and that perhaps maybe the people who are tearing apart your favorite title are seeing something that you don’t.

Batshit, I know.  But replace “WildStar” with any other game you’ve loved, or gaming platform, or even playstyle…see if that doesn’t make your teeth grit just that little bit at the memory.

Pretty sure this image will meet my daily internet meme quota.

So when things start to get to that point where the completely subjective opinion of others affects my enjoyment, that’s when I tend to sever contact.  Not to run away from some horrible truth, but to just turn off the hissing staticy radio.

And that’s sorta what this is all about.  Signal to noise.

I’ve grown up watching this whole internet thing proliferate into the weird, wobbly-ass monster it is today, and overall I am stunned and amazed at where it’s headed.  I’ve also been exposed to enough people, digitally and literally, to know when someone is trying to yank my chain.  It’s significantly worse digitally, what with the cloak of invisibility we all hide behind…but through the horribly typed nonsense and unnecessary snark, the same tactics and same hissing static is there.

So that’s when you rise above the wriggling worms and head to the sunshine of your enjoyment.  That’s when you just…shut off that avenue that people speed along to run your ass over.  At least for a little while.  Get back in to that thing you love, really listen to the music and sound effects and clicking of your keystrokes or button presses and just…fuckin’ enjoy, man.

…or woman. Sorry.

Being a fan of a thing is hard as hell, and we have more ways than ever to connect to one another and call each other a shitweasel.  The point isn’t to shut out dissenting opinion or to even select only those who fit your personal narrative.  It’s to find the ones who can understand the solidarity of being a gamer or a fan of a thing.  We’re all just looking to have some fun.  It’s not that unheard of that different people can agree to that, right?

Enjoying stuff isn’t tearing down someone else’s stuff or snatching away that person’s toys.  It’s being with others to heighten communal enjoyment, and maybe even discuss amongst ourselves the stuff we do and play and come to at least an understanding…or bare minimum an agreement to disagree.  I’m not gonna adore PvP, but…yanno what?  Reading that blog post made me realize that even my PvE-lovin’ ass can understand that loving a thing is hard.

That’s how you cross lines and clink beer steins, my friends.