I haven't really felt like writing out any formal reviews of the games I've been playing, and this is going to continue the trend. So all this will be stream-of consciousness ranting.
Amazingly, I have been playing a game that came out this year. Shock and awe! Actually, thank you Redbox for letting me try out a game that I didn't know if I'd actually want to play. I played all three of the original Mass Effect games, and liked them overall (of course, the original ending to 3 sucked, which no doubt any computer gamer has heard of). I've played all the Dragon Age games, including Inquisition (sadly), also by Bioware (which I mention because I'll reference it later), and mostly liked those as well (first was the best IMO). So I was kind of looking forward to Andromeda, but not exactly jumping for joy to see it. Let me run through a few things from the (admittedly limited) time I've played. I have only made it about half-way through the game, so there won't be any spoilers.
The biggest complaint I heard about before playing Andromeda was the animation. You can find tons of YouTube videos on the bad facial animations and general animation bugs. I first played after a patch, which helped fix those, but being partially deaf I always play with the subtitles on - so I could easily ignore the faces, which are mediocre for the most part.
Okay, so that out of the way, overall I'd say it was an okay game, but not amazing. It felt like a Mass Effect game overall, not as big as 1 but broader than 2, not as scripted as 3. It was alright in terms of being ME. You start the game as one of the Ryder twins, who are low-level explorers under their dad, just arriving in the Andromeda galaxy on a one-way trip. It's different from ME 1 where Shepard was already known, you choosing what he was known for. So it feels a little different, but I found that a good thing as it helped subtly detach me from missing Shepard so much.
Classes are gone, you can choose between Tech, Biotic or Combat as you will. That is cool in a gameplay sense - you have freedom to try different playstyles and tactics. It makes the story weird though. One of your first companions, Cora, is a Biotic, and will talk about how she was basically ostracized for her powers - and never mention that you too could be a Biotic, thus sympathizing. Also, at a later point she uses her powers in a pretty dramatic way - and again you get ignored even if you fully spent that way. It's a small thing, but it really stood out to me the few times it popped up.
The trees seem pretty well-rounded. Most of the Combat skills didn't appeal to me, and it felt like a lot of the Biotic skills were meant for melee - so I went mostly Tech. I did try them all, Tech just fit better for me (as it did in ME 3, prior to that one I had always been a soldier). The abilities are okay, but introduced a new combo system - some skills primed a combo, and some detonated a combo, and combos do a pretty significant amount of damage and so are quite useful. But, there are a lot more primers than detonators, which made it feel like you had to stick to a few skills, and it was impossible to co-ordinate with your companions to have one of you prime and the other detonate, which would have been awesome (yes, companions can prime, but you have to notice what they're doing to whom, which can be quite difficult in the chaos of combat).
Also, you could only keep 3 skills (no more power wheel) active, on the Xbox they were left/right bumper and both together. That really feels limiting after opening the game up so you can choose from so many powers. I hated that part of the game, the old power wheel would have been much better.
Your one wheel is now your guns and consumables - maybe it's just me, but I always forgot I had consumables. They can recharge your shields, launch a rocket, or give you disrupter or incendiary ammo - so they are useful; I just forgot about them. I don't remember that system ever being in the previous games, and I did play on the easy difficulty (I was paying by the day to rent it, so I wanted to get as far as possible - though it could still be nicely difficult at some spots) so I didn't need them as much as someone or Hardcore (or the equivalent). You also start with only 2 gun slots, have to buy in the combat tree to unlock 3 and 4, and gun weight can slow your power recharge speed. All of that was fine, I would recommend getting the 3rd slot so you can keep a short, medium and long ranged weapon, which you can get fairly light versions of or abilities to increase your carry weight (assault rifle, shotgun and sniper rifle left me at -3% with my tech heavy build).
Weapons are okay, there are a lot of different types, but you have to craft them. You almost never see a weapon drop from an enemy unless you researched it (more on that in a sec), or even for sale. That totally sucked. The weapons do shoot fairly differently, so it would be great to be able to try them out on a gun range type setting (like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided). I really like assault rifles (can passably snipe distance, short bursts work at medium, and if someone gets close you can hold down the trigger - so they're jack-of-all-trade weapons) and just kept the one I started with for the game, mostly (crafted one upgraded and modded version). The Reegar Shotgun (not sure of spelling, too lazy to look it up) is Totally Awesome - it Shoots Lighting!!! I loved it, it's wicked at close range against just about anything. One of the Kett (your enemy race) sniper rifles has explosive shots, which was also fun. I'd recommend watching some YouTube videos on the different gun types before playing, to save yourself some grief.
You can also mod weapons and armor - which sucks overall. Fallout 4 did a much better system, Andromeda is a mostly useless sub-system. You have to scan objects in the world to earn research points, and there are 3 different types of research points which making different weapons, armors and mods. Research is kind of hard to come by in the early game, so it really hurts to waste points on a weapon you don't like the feel of (hence my suggestion to look them up before playing). Later in the game you get a good pool of points, but it uses the stupid treadmill system every damn stupid game has to use - so you pay to research Avenger 1, then pay more for Avenger 2 and so on and so on until Avenger 10 (or whatever). Each level is only a little better than the one before though, so it doesn't feel like you got much for your investment. From 1 to 2 is a step, since at 2 you can add mods to a gun and enhance it, but even from 1 to 10 is only like a 10-20% increase (or so, I don't have the game in front of me to verify the numbers) - so it doesn't feel like an accomplishment. I kept my first crafted and modified assault rifle thorough the half-way point of the game I ended at. Again, being on Easy might have made it less noticeable, Hardcore people might need to stay upgrading, but I just thought is was crap, and it's crap in all the other games that do it. Far better was the mod system, where you could make a weapon not use ammo but overheat (like ME 1, which is still my favorite system and totally fit the lore), or shoot lightning (though you have a cool shotgun noted above for that) or plasma balls - you can really see and feel the difference with mods. Those mods, and turning the different weapon types into mods, I would have loved (so, there are like 4 types of assault rifles, one that is a general full auto, another is higher damage but single shot, another shoots bursts only, and another full auto but has a spin-up time like a minigun - all of those would have been better as mods to the base "assault rifle" template in my opinion).
You can also craft and upgrade armor - but again crafting sucks. You have to harvest a stupid number of different materials (making it really hard to remember which one you need for your current project, or figure out where to find that stuff), and your options are really crappy for some items. I really wanted to make the N7 armor my dad designed - but it only buffed Biotic powers, kind of stupid given dad could do all abilities like you. Useful armor mods were hard to find for me (like +health or +shields), I only saw them in a few stores, and the ones you can craft are very limited in scope. In order to craft you also have to mine, which you do by driving around in circles (literally) on a planet when the computer tells you you're near some materials. I Totally Hated That Time-Wasting Crap. Buying them is kind of expensive, and you can't really find them from orbit like ME2 (though ME 2 had a similar system, which also sucked). In all, look online for the guns you think you'll like, research them a level or two, craft them - and then forget about the whole system. It's honestly more of a waste of time than it is helpful.
Combat is good though, it's more fast-paced, your jetpack and dodge let you zip around the battlefield (and a Biotic ability creates a shield that reflects bullets, which is fun for when you want to walk right up to somebody's face). The enemy AI seemed decent, and there are different enemy types. Overall I thought the combat was the best part of the game (and you do plenty of it).
Dialogue, however, sucks. Forgetting any animation glitches, you almost never know what exactly you're going to say, and it really felt like it didn't matter what you said (something Fallout 4 did as well, though I don't know if I remembered to mention it in my post). I really hated talking to people, which I was hoping would be a great part of the system - and I liked lots more in ME 1-3.
Companions are okay, most all of them are interesting characters in a variety of personalities. Their random banter can be really cool, which I remember loving in Dragon Age: Origins and am happy to see in Andromeda. There are romance options like always, actual nudity in the obligatory sex scene (why? though it is better than the underwear scene from DA:O), but nothing really different from the previous games. Which is good, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
The story, however, blows chunks. It is not really that engaging, has several easy to see plot points, and just didn't seem like it was that much fun to do the main quests. It is full of side quests, most of which felt like a waste of time, which reminded of the worst of Dragon Age: Inquisition (though not as horrific as DA:I). I was really hoping for multiple alien races, I only saw one, which felt odd given all the many different races, with different personalities, in the previous games. I got about half-way through the main storyline (according to internet research) and honestly I don't care if I ever finish it. Doesn't seem like you make many meaningful decisions, and the lack of Paragon/Renegade didn't help (even though those were mediocre morality systems, they did have some great interrupt moments)(loved pushing the guy out the window in ME2).
Also, being strangers in a strange galaxy, there is a kind of base-building system. You can earn points by terraforming planets to wake up more colonists and gain different abilities from the ones you thaw. Except, the bonuses you get are really forgettable and don't contribute much. Your first base you can choose weather to be scientific or military - and you never get that choice for subsequent bases, and it doesn't matter except for one or two lines of dialogue. This is where it painfully reminded me of Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I'm sad that after making such a suck-all base system in that game they did the same thing in Andromeda. There's also a multiplayer thing I didn't use because I don't like multiplayer, and some rewards in real-time that were also so small as to be inconsequential.
Overall, I'd say if you liked the Mass Effect games wait to get this one cheap at GameStop. If you didn't care for ME, then skip this one, I doubt it will sell you on the franchise. Or just rent it a time or two from Redbox like I did.
Showing posts with label Computer Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computer Games. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Thoughts on Fallout 4
As usual for me, I'm behind several years on the games I play. So I've just finished playing Fallout 4. Well, "finished" in the sense that I've hit the limit of what I can stand doing, not that I've run out of things/quests to do. I did finish the main quest though. So here are a few thoughts about it.
I loved the crafting system for weapons. It was a nice touch, making all that junk that's lying around in every Fallout game (at least 3 & NV that I've played) actually useful, and scrounging has the post-apocalyptic feel. It also was useful, letting you make much better weapons out of the ones you find. I love crafting too, which helped :) Some of the options were really good too, changing how the guns felt shooting or letting you tailor your weapons to your playstyle, like close and automatic or long-ranged sniping. The plasma option to turn your gun into a mini-flamethrower was a totally great addition (so much fun). On the downside, you do have the omnipresent level grind where you go from 'standard receiver' to 'advanced receiver' to 'amazingly godlike receiver' for your base damage upgrading. I've never been fond of that style of mechanic, though I guess it is unavoidable with a level-based game.
Likewise I loved the settlement building. Had that perfect feel for trying to create a new, better future. Again, loving crafting helped. It was awesome to build my own mansion, using large glass windows to look out on the ruined city (from my island, after ridding it of Milelurks). But that charm really wore off when I realized there was no good reason at all to actually build a settlement. All it gave you was some crafting stations, which are everywhere, a place to store your junk (that is you didn't like crafting wasn't an issue), and a few useful crops (glue is used in everything, literally, so being able to grow your own was a huge plus). Overall though, they can get attacked, side-tracking you from you were doing to help. Settlers do not level up, and have no gear really, so equipping them to survive the higher level enemies was a micromanaging pain the behind. They take a lot of resources to build, and just again, you get little from the sense of accomplishment from them - which isn't something to scoff at, but wears out fairly quickly.
Like the last 2 Fallout games, the main quest is something you can really ignore. I didn't care at all about finding my son, and waited several days of playing before working on it. The faction quests were okay, though I mostly focused on The Brotherhood of Steel myself. The ending was not really very satisfying - but that's been true of the last 2 Fallout games in spades; I HATED New Vegas for making me walk off into the sunset when I'd worked so hard to make my own robot army to take over the place.
Otherwise there's plenty to do, and some fun quests (the robots on the ship was awesome, the witchcraft museum was great - even knowing the plot really, and the haunted mine was totally cool). I did not like any of the companions, until I got the Automatron DLC and loved Ada your robot friend. The difficulty was good for me, not too hard, though near the end it did start to get pretty easy. Getting your first suit of power armor early on was fantastic, though the fight for it was pretty intense.
I liked the game. For the discounted price I got it from GameStop it was well worth it, and I thought the DLC was decently priced for what you got.
I loved the crafting system for weapons. It was a nice touch, making all that junk that's lying around in every Fallout game (at least 3 & NV that I've played) actually useful, and scrounging has the post-apocalyptic feel. It also was useful, letting you make much better weapons out of the ones you find. I love crafting too, which helped :) Some of the options were really good too, changing how the guns felt shooting or letting you tailor your weapons to your playstyle, like close and automatic or long-ranged sniping. The plasma option to turn your gun into a mini-flamethrower was a totally great addition (so much fun). On the downside, you do have the omnipresent level grind where you go from 'standard receiver' to 'advanced receiver' to 'amazingly godlike receiver' for your base damage upgrading. I've never been fond of that style of mechanic, though I guess it is unavoidable with a level-based game.
Likewise I loved the settlement building. Had that perfect feel for trying to create a new, better future. Again, loving crafting helped. It was awesome to build my own mansion, using large glass windows to look out on the ruined city (from my island, after ridding it of Milelurks). But that charm really wore off when I realized there was no good reason at all to actually build a settlement. All it gave you was some crafting stations, which are everywhere, a place to store your junk (that is you didn't like crafting wasn't an issue), and a few useful crops (glue is used in everything, literally, so being able to grow your own was a huge plus). Overall though, they can get attacked, side-tracking you from you were doing to help. Settlers do not level up, and have no gear really, so equipping them to survive the higher level enemies was a micromanaging pain the behind. They take a lot of resources to build, and just again, you get little from the sense of accomplishment from them - which isn't something to scoff at, but wears out fairly quickly.
Like the last 2 Fallout games, the main quest is something you can really ignore. I didn't care at all about finding my son, and waited several days of playing before working on it. The faction quests were okay, though I mostly focused on The Brotherhood of Steel myself. The ending was not really very satisfying - but that's been true of the last 2 Fallout games in spades; I HATED New Vegas for making me walk off into the sunset when I'd worked so hard to make my own robot army to take over the place.
Otherwise there's plenty to do, and some fun quests (the robots on the ship was awesome, the witchcraft museum was great - even knowing the plot really, and the haunted mine was totally cool). I did not like any of the companions, until I got the Automatron DLC and loved Ada your robot friend. The difficulty was good for me, not too hard, though near the end it did start to get pretty easy. Getting your first suit of power armor early on was fantastic, though the fight for it was pretty intense.
I liked the game. For the discounted price I got it from GameStop it was well worth it, and I thought the DLC was decently priced for what you got.
First Impressions - Gwent: The Witcher Card Game
Found a preview build of this on a friend's Xbox One. I've heard of The Witcher (mostly good things) but never played any of the games. I was hitting the end of my Fallout 4 kick (which I'll talk about soon) and figured I'd try something new. I've played a fair number of card games in the past, my brother got me hooked on Magic when it first came out. The Battletech CCG was cool, and a tabletop game I liked, Mythos, the Call of Cuthulu CCG was innovative of the times, and the Aliens CCG looked neat but I never got to play it. So I've seen a few in my day, though granted that was many years ago.
Gwent struck me as a really cool game, and an interesting twist on some of the common mechanics. Briefly, you construct for one of 5 or 6 factions each with their own strategies. You draw a good sized hand, but the game is played in 3 rounds and on round 2 you draw 2 more cards and round 3 only 1 card. So it makes a nice tension for how many cards do you want to burn though now or save for later. It also makes for circumstances when choosing to lose a round is a good tactical option. That's a nice complexity. The winner of each round is determined but a simple total of power, highest wins. Each character card has a power number, "spells" and such do not. So your cards do not directly fight like in Magic, though they do have abilities that can target each other. You also have a leader card with a powerful special ability, but they can only be played once in the entire match. Cards are placed on one of 3 rows: melee, ranged and siege; and some effects target a whole row or adjacent units. It has a nice tactical depth without being too hard to learn and track (in my so far limited experience).
If you like card games or board games I'd give it a try.
There are a few things I am not too fond of. The tutorial didn't quite explain that when you pass, you stop acting/playing cards for the round. I thought like most CCG's you only sat out one round. This does make some of the "damage over time"-type effects a little less useful, since you have to keep playing cards to sustain the effect and you may need to stop to avoid burning yourself out for later. The card effects are not always explained well, though in play you start to get a feel for the quirks, but since it's basically a beta game I'm sure the tooltips and such will get clearer soon enough. Also, the number one problem with any CCG is explaining the fundamental tactics that each faction uses. It can be a little hard to suss out by reading the cards, I'd imagine moreso if you are new to card games in general. This can be kind of simple, like the monster deck that summons and sacrifices cards, or a little trickier - the leader in the deck I've mostly used has an ability I did not catch at first. Normally you hold your leader, since it can only be played once in the whole match; but this leader added 1 power to every character in my hand and deck - so it was best to play him as the first card of the match. Not a big deal, but I wish more games would give some hints or a walk-through of strategies in general, just to soften the learning curve.
I'm sure I'll play it some more, but just against the computer opponents. I don't really like playing adversarial games in general, and I don't really care for playing games with or against random people across the world. Still, I thought it was a pretty good game, it's free, and worth taking a look at.
Gwent struck me as a really cool game, and an interesting twist on some of the common mechanics. Briefly, you construct for one of 5 or 6 factions each with their own strategies. You draw a good sized hand, but the game is played in 3 rounds and on round 2 you draw 2 more cards and round 3 only 1 card. So it makes a nice tension for how many cards do you want to burn though now or save for later. It also makes for circumstances when choosing to lose a round is a good tactical option. That's a nice complexity. The winner of each round is determined but a simple total of power, highest wins. Each character card has a power number, "spells" and such do not. So your cards do not directly fight like in Magic, though they do have abilities that can target each other. You also have a leader card with a powerful special ability, but they can only be played once in the entire match. Cards are placed on one of 3 rows: melee, ranged and siege; and some effects target a whole row or adjacent units. It has a nice tactical depth without being too hard to learn and track (in my so far limited experience).
If you like card games or board games I'd give it a try.
There are a few things I am not too fond of. The tutorial didn't quite explain that when you pass, you stop acting/playing cards for the round. I thought like most CCG's you only sat out one round. This does make some of the "damage over time"-type effects a little less useful, since you have to keep playing cards to sustain the effect and you may need to stop to avoid burning yourself out for later. The card effects are not always explained well, though in play you start to get a feel for the quirks, but since it's basically a beta game I'm sure the tooltips and such will get clearer soon enough. Also, the number one problem with any CCG is explaining the fundamental tactics that each faction uses. It can be a little hard to suss out by reading the cards, I'd imagine moreso if you are new to card games in general. This can be kind of simple, like the monster deck that summons and sacrifices cards, or a little trickier - the leader in the deck I've mostly used has an ability I did not catch at first. Normally you hold your leader, since it can only be played once in the whole match; but this leader added 1 power to every character in my hand and deck - so it was best to play him as the first card of the match. Not a big deal, but I wish more games would give some hints or a walk-through of strategies in general, just to soften the learning curve.
I'm sure I'll play it some more, but just against the computer opponents. I don't really like playing adversarial games in general, and I don't really care for playing games with or against random people across the world. Still, I thought it was a pretty good game, it's free, and worth taking a look at.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Evil (in my opinion) Game Design
After having posted the great Extra Credits episode on Humane Game Design, I had to post a link to this. I like to read Cracked.com, they have a great mix of different articles and write about even serious subjects in a funny manner. But when I came across this article on 5 Reasons I Lost $9,000 On An iPhone Game, I had to post something about it here.
I have never been a casual game fan, I like to accomplish something in my games. I'm currently playing Skyrim (yeah, I'm well behind the curve) and I like it (despite some flaws). I like having quests and completing quests and building my own house (I had to get the game of the year edition for Hearthfire). I like getting stuff done. Which has been a problem with me and MMOs, the repetitive nature of their content feels like I haven't gotten anywhere. But while I may not like that kind of design, the game described in the cracked article sounds downright evil. Like it was meant to use social pressure to force people to spend money on what is marked as a free-to-play game. That's a whole 'nother level of horrible game design. I cannot fathom why people would play this sort of game at all, but I do feel sorry for them being manipulated (weather deliberately or not) into spending way too much time and especially money on a game.
No deep thoughts, not right now at least, just something so amazing I wanted to post a link to it.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Player Action vs System Action
Writing about the Marvel Heroes MMO got me thinking about MMOs in general. Now, I'm not a big MMO fan. My gaming experience started with table-top pen-and-paper role-playing games (D&D of course). It was a few years later when I'd get my own computer, a Commodore 128 (yeah, I'm that old) and I started playing computer games. Through that, and the 486 PC that followed, I'd mostly play computer RPGs, which were the closest to the pen-and-paper RPGs I was playing with my friends through High School. So ideas like controlling a whole party, exploring and mapping, leveling and customizing each party member to work as a group were the sorts of games I played.
Years would pass before I got another computer, a P4 Windows XP desktop (which was sweet at the time). I started playing a slightly wider style of games, like Diablo 2 and Master of Orion 2, even The Sims 1. When I stayed with my friends I was introduced to the Xbox 360 and games like the Borderlands first person shooter and the Mass Effect FPS/RPG hybrid. At the same time we started playing Pathfinder, after a decade-long hiatus from PnP RPGs. I dabbled with MMOs a little, playing EverQuest 2, Age of Conan, and a little World of Warcraft. Aaron and Sara would get me seriously playing The Lord of the Rings Online though.
LotRO was a very interesting game. I first played on my friend Matt's computer, as a Guardian (tank) that he had as an alt (he liked the Minstrel). When I started playing the game myself, I made the same thing - a new Guardian, and got him pretty high, to about level 40 (I think the level cap was 80 back then). He was okay, but as a tank his focus was on drawing aggro from the party members - so his damage output was not great, I could take a beating but it also took minutes (that felt like hours) to kill anything and everything; and when I didn't play with my friends I had no use for half of my skills. Then came the Warden.
The Warden was one of two classes added to LotRO (the other was the Rune-keeper). Classes in MMOs in general, and in LotRO at the time, tended to be very specific. The Guardian took aggro and survived the damage. The Hunter had the high damage output. The Burglar and Lore-master did crowd control (with the Burglar doing some burst damage too). The Minstrel healed everybody. There was a Captain class, which had a sort of flexible role, but by and large each class had a specific job in the party. It was the Warden who ended up becoming the true jack of all trades.
The Warden used a very different mechanic from anything else in LotRO, and honestly in any other MMO that I've played. Combat was based on a two-tier Builder and Gambit system. You started with 3 Builders: the Spear, the Shield and the Shout. The Spear did some damage to your opponent in melee (Wardens started weak at ranged combat), the Shield gave you a 10 second buff to your defenses and the Shout generated aggro. Each Builder you used was put into a queue, and when you had 2 or more, you unlocked a Gambit. So Spear-Spear created a Gambit that did extra damage. But Spear-Shield created a Gambit that interrupted your opponent's action (some monsters had 1-2 second inductions, if you interrupted them they lost their action - if you didn't they got off a super-attack). And Shout-Spear created a damage-over-time Gambit. As you leveled up you learned the 3-Builder Gambits and then 4-Builder Gambits.
This gave the Warden incredible flexibility, they could focus on damage output or limited crowd control or defense - eventually they could even heal the entire party and drain life from a group of enemies. The catch was that you had to plan ahead. Each Builder took about a second to execute, and the Gambit took another second - so it could be 5 seconds from when you started until you triggered your desired effect (which is actually quite a long time in a fight). You had to constantly be looking at the direction of the fight, at what you would be needing soon, and building your way towards that. On top of which, you had to remember all the Gambits. When you used a Builder it went into a special part of the UI, and it would show you the Gambit you had currently unlocked - but it wouldn't show you the other possible gambits. That was in a list in your skill panel and you just had to memorize it. So playing a Warden required a lot of thought - it was the opposite of the button-mashing, basic rotation that most MMO classes use. But, there was a quest early on where you have to get attacked by a group of bandits. More bandits patrol the area and likely some will join in on the fun. My Guardian, who was built to withstand all kinds of punishment, was killed. My Warden took them all on and walked away. I even soloed elite monsters, who were over-powered for their level, and who were several levels higher than me to begin with. He was my only character who got the achievement for making level 20 without dying. He was, in a word, awesome.
Two things about the Warden that prompted me to write this post.
First, it got me thinking about Player Action vs System Action. (hey, I did finally get around to the title of this post :) Every game, from pen-and-paper to computer, has a split between the work the player does and the work the system does. In most pen-and-paper games the system picks up a lot of the work. The player decides to attack, and then the numbers already chosen at character creation and the numbers rolled on the dice take over to determine the results. But then there are more story-based games, even diceless ones, where the player may still roll or bid to gain the ability to narrate the results of the fight. In computer games, even in the first-person shooter genera there is the difference between directly aiming and auto-assist (when the game will fudge where you were aiming as long as it was 'close enough' to an enemy). How much the player puts into each action and what the system handles automatically determines a lot of the feel of a game. This includes decisions - if the game only offers one possible attack, that's mostly system action; but if the player has to choose between dozens of options, that's mostly player action (like Warhammer 40k or any tactical miniatures game where the number of pieces under player control creates a lot of player action, and there are very simple rules to cover the system actions).
So what, you may ask? What does it mater if the game is more system or player action? Well, that hits my second point. See, the Warden I have described was the original one I started playing in 2010/2011-ish. Since then they have revamped the system. A lot of abilities that were standard Gambits are now parts of a skill tree system, which has the effect of narrowing the Warden's previously unlimited choices. The new skill tree focuses on making you play as either a damage or tank or ranged fighter, simplifying the playstyle for those who might have found it too broad and confusing. In the process however, it reduced the enjoyment of the class for those of us, like me, who thought the system was perfect to begin with.
Feeling matters. If you loved the player/system split in a game, and then that dynamic changes in an update, DLC or patch (or new edition) - well, there goes that good time. And this matters to me because as a game designer, who is currently hacking 13th Age and FATE, I want to give my players a feel that they will enjoy. I want them to make meaningful choices, to help build immersion in the game and attachment to the character - but I don't want to overload them and give them more than they are comfortable with. Complicating the issue is that each person has a different sweet spot for how much work is too much. Most people seemed to think the Warden was overly complicated, I thought it was a refreshing breath of fresh air. So how do you build in some flexibility, some give and take, to let people still be equally useful while maybe using different levels of player vs system action? That is a good question, and a very hard one to answer. Part of that difficulty stems from the fact that we sometimes don't know what we'll enjoy until we try it. I had never played a class like the Warden before, and so I could not have articulated for you beforehand what I would like to play.
One of my dreams, back when I first started working on the idea for my own RPG, was to have three different levels of rules. Each "Ruleset" would be built on a common core, but each would have a different amount of complexity. The simplest would work at a high level, describing everything in broad terms, while the other two would get more focused. Take this example: at the top end you have the idea of "Crafting." Under that umbrella, there could be classes like "Metalsmithing" and "Woodworking." And even under a class there were still more specifics- a "Metalsmith" could be an "Armorer," "Weaponsmith" or general "Blacksmith." That final layer is about as detailed as it's worth going, and it really presents a much clearer picture than the layers above it - but they all nest together in a way, and they all cover the same basic concept; that the character is capable of creating things. Ideally, I thought, this would give each player the ability to be as broad or as specific as they wanted in describing their character - to find their own sweet spot of detail, and still use similar numbers and a resolution system that could let two different levels of detail interact. It was a nice dream, and a real pain in the backside to try to make into reality (getting one set of rules working right is a challenge, getting three and then having them interact, was a challenge to the 4th power).
Still, this idea has stuck with me. If you look at the market there is a wide variety of style of rules and balances between system/player actions. Even the continuum of Microlite20 <-> 13th Age <-> Pathfinder shows a lot of variety in a few essentially related systems. Really, this is just some open brain-storming, hoping that if I try to consolidate my thoughts into a post it might knock lose some great new insight. Sadly, no luck so far. But this concept, and what it means for the games I'm working on and playing, is something that I think bears consideration. It would be great if everybody could play in a style that they felt most comfortable with yet still all fit together. It might be an impossible dream, but it is a nice dream.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
From Extra Credits: Humane Game Design
I really like the Extra Credits channel on YouTube. They talk about game design issues, which is something near and dear to my heart. The one big complaint I have with them is that they are too short. Each topic they discuss could easily be an hour-long investigation with lots of concrete examples. Sadly I seem to be in the minority of this, since they keep making 6 minute segments. But after talking about randomness in my last post, this new video really struck a nerve with me, so I thought I'd link to it here. I'm going to digest it and come up with some thoughts later.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Marvel Heroes Reminds Me Why I Hate Randomness
My friend Aaron got me playing the Marvel Heroes MMO. My last blog post was about it, and I wanted to write something about the game in general. If you haven't played Marvel let me sum it up in one sentence: it's Diablo 3 with superheroes. If you haven't played Diablo 3 (or any of the series really), let me sum that up: loot, and randomness.
Let's digress and talk about Diablo 3 for a moment. Diablo 3, and 2 (I never played the first) are all about the loot. While they have some trappings of an RPG - there is experience and leveling and choosing to put points in abilities - all of that is secondary. It's really about the loot. Your abilities can give you a lot of power, but in order to survive in the game you have to get the right equipment. Each piece of armor and every weapon gives bonuses to your base stats and your powers. And all items are not created equal. The most basic ones give a tiny bonus, while the best legendary items give tons of bonuses or even brand new abilities. Without the greatest items, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to defeat the toughest bosses. Your abilities are nice, but if you're standing naked in a field of demons you're dead. You need loot.
Along with the need for loot comes randomness. Each monster drops a random item, each map is randomized in its layout every time you visit, each boss spawns with random abilities. You have control over which abilities you put points into when you level up - and absolutely everything after that is subject to the whims of the random number generator (or RNG). Everything.
Now, I've got a whole 'nother rant about loot stats vs player skill, based on my playing The Lord of the Rings Online actually. But for right now I want to look at randomness. I hate randomness, and I hate it for a variety of reasons...
Randomness is a psychological trick
A system that gives random rewards (in size/composition) at random intervals is commonly called a Skinner Box, after the psychologist who discovered that it was one of the most addictive forms of reward. You never know how many monsters you'll have to kill to get a legendary item, and you never know if the great RNG god will drop a useful legendary item when it does, but there is always the chance that it is that next monster that will have the item you've been looking for/dreaming of. It's a dirty, underhanded way to try to get someone to keep playing. Personally, I have an addictive personality, the kind of brain that falls for this sort of thing really easily. I played an ungodly number of hours of Diablo 2 back in the day, and it could be hard to put down Diablo 3 at times. Of course, almost every MMO is a Skinner Box to some degree, and a good number of other games are too. Still doesn't mean I like or agree with it. You kill x number of monsters and you level up to by y number of skills/abilities from z number of choices. That's the leveling system in a nutshell and it is very fixed, with little randomness, and if it works for a character's powers/abilities I don't know why it couldn't work for equipment as well.
Randomness creates waste
Now, with different quality of loot and multiple attempts needed to find the item you want (the more attempts needed the better the item), the system inherently is wasteful. You will always accumulate "vendor trash" - stuff that you will not use because it is beneath you, and just sell off to an NPC for some equally useless cash, typically. Well, it's not just the item that was wasted - you also wasted your time killing all those monsters and juggling your inventory to sell all that vendor trash. And, frequently, you wasted a lot of time reloading the map to try to find the one randomly spawning monster who might randomly drop the item you wanted in the first place. Waste, waste, waste. God knows I have wasted plenty of my life on my own, I don't need my games helping me.
Randomness creates frustration
Along with all this repetitive waste comes an emotion, frustration. Every gamer has known the pain of grinding through a level or area in search of a widget and not finding it. To have all that time flushed down the toilet is annoying, and when the great RNG god decides to hate you, and you spend hours after hours chasing something and not finding it, it totally sucks. Like smash the keyboard or throw the controller sucks. Spending time is okay, investing time (by doing something that gives a reward or benefit) is good, but wasting time feels terrible.
And then, of course, after spending 10 hours fruitlessly searching for the ultimate widget, you'll see in the chat channel where someone found it in 2 minutes. That always gives you a nice warm glow of thermonuclear rage.
Randomness destroys meaning
Randomness always requires repetition. If there is a 1-in-a-thousand chance of getting something, and you only ever get one chance at it, you'll either not play or immediately be out of chances. To keep this randomness going you have to keep repeating the steps, keep killing just one more monster, one more boss. And, invariably, it will be the same monster and the same bosses. Took down the Kingpen's criminal empire by killing all his thugs and then dealing with him as well as Elektra and Bullseye, good job! But he didn't drop the widget, so wait a second for him to respawn and go do it again. And again. And again.
By having bosses and monsters respawn it destroys all meaning. So what if you killed him, he'll be back. Nothing you do makes any kind of lasting impact on the world. Nothing you do matters - except to you. You finally killed him enough times to get the widget, so things are better in your own little universe. But does the self-centered pursuit of stuff really mean anything? It's not like you can use that new widget to make any changes. Sure, you can finally up the difficulty level, kill a bigger monster; who will then respawn just like the rest. It's one of the funny things about The Lord of the Rings Online, the fellowship's quest will never end, The One Ring will just respawn and somebody else will have to throw it in Mount Doom. Comics are often derided for making death cheap. When a hero, or even villain, dies it is just a matter of time before they come back in one form or another. Death does not matter, nothing matters really. Sad that one of the worst things about a genera can become enshrined in its digital form.
Having just gone over all the things I don't like about randomness, I'll admit that there is something I do like about it...
Randomness creates uncertainty
As soul-crushingly horrible as randomness is, there is one thing it does right - it creates uncertainty. Will this work, or won't it? There's the old saying about the "best laid plans..." and randomness provides that. You have a great plan, kill the monster and take the treasure, but sorry Mario, your princess is in another castle. Uncertainty is good. If you know you're going to win (or even lose) then there is less reason to play. Victory without challenge is hollow, unearned, and failure despite your efforts is beyond frustration.
Uncertainty is what makes the journey work taking. Not knowing means you have to try in order to find out. It gives an impulse, a shot in the arm to take the plunge and go for it. It also keeps you on your toes. Not knowing what is behind the door, around the next corner, if Plan A will work or if you should start warming up Plan E - all of that keeps you thinking, keeps you engaged. And randomness does help create that uncertainty, which is admittedly vital to any enjoyable game.
Now, with the little good for all the bad we get from randomness, the question is how can we create a system that gives us more good than bad? That's an excellent question and one that I do not have a ready answer for. I never tried any of the few "diceless" role-playing games, though the idea does appeal to me. Even in a pen and paper RPG there can be a little too much randomness, though nowhere as bad as in computer games; and why I prefer to play tabletop instead. Single-player computer games tend to have less randomness, the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes game is nothing at all like the Marvel MMO. And honestly with so many people in the same world, I'm not sure how much randomness you can cut out of an MMO. It may just be the nature of the beast. Still, I'd love to see somebody try.
Okay, well, to wrap things up a few more thoughts on the Marvel MMO that I started talking about.
I don't know why they went with a Diablo-clone as a model with the superhero genera except for marketing reasons. While some heroes are all about the gear, like Iron Man, others have very little care about their clothing or stuff, like Cyclops. So the Diablo-loot-centric design feels very off for some of the characters. It's plain ridiculous for others - Captain America has a "shield" slot that lets you equip different shields with different abilities; and this is a character defined by his one-of-a-kind, cannot-be-duplicated piece of equipment ! Likewise Wolverine can equip different claws as if it was that easy to just pop out the old set and switch them for a new model. It is just so stupid if you actually think about it. (I know, I know, thinking bad)
They have over 40 characters, but a fixed pool that you can test run. This sucks because the character you want to play may not be in the list of starting characters to choose from. You can play each starting character to level 10, and can only choose one to reach the level cap (currently 60). So you might really want to play Rogue, but she isn't starting so you either have to shell out real money or play another character and collect the in-game "eternity splinters" that can be used to unlock things for free (well, for time spent playing, really). That kind of sucks. It would be very cool of them to give you x number of trial slots to level 10 and one (or even 2 to be really nice) full slots. As they keep adding more and more characters it's more of an annoyance.
The control scheme also sucks. You have left- and right-mouse-button powers, and then 6 other powers (defaulting to 'A' through 'H' I believe, I changed the scheme myself). All your moving is done by clicking the left mouse button, so there is a key to hold yourself in place since that's also an action/attack button (and so much fun when you kill a bad guy and then casually walk into the middle of the group of other bad guys he was a part of). All your targeting is done by where the mouse is on the screen. It reminds me so much of Guild Wars 2 - both of these games have a limited enough set of abilities that they would be great to use with a controller, and neither has support for a controller. I am a mouse guy. In a typical MMO I use my left hand for the 4 arrow keys to move, and maybe a hotkey to target the nearest enemy. My right hand on the mouse does all the work, it selects and activates abilities. For some reason I have the worst time getting my fingers to hit multiple keys without tripping over themselves. I changed the Marvel scheme to A, S, D for half the abilities and Q, W, E the other half. This lets me put a different finger on each ability, minimizing the screw-ups, and I can move my whole hand to a new row. That helps, but is still nowhere as good as having a controller with 16+ keys available, and each hand able to do different things. I have only played Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360 with a controller, so I know it can be done, and work really well. And getting a controller for a PC is dirt cheap, the one I have is $20 and works great when a game actually supports it.
So, as you can see there is a lot about the game that I am not fond of. However, it can be very fun to play. Cyclops is my main character, and I do love melting everything with red eye-beams. The characters feel different, so you can play more than one and have them all be interesting. It looks pretty, I couldn't play the game on my old laptop. And of course, the biggest reason for playing any game is the people. My friend really likes Iceman, and this is the only game out there with him (in fact, cold-themed characters of any kind are sort of scarce). So he gets to play his favorite X-Man and I get to play mine, and we can play together. We just got Sara into the game too, so we also have an angry little raccoon with a tactical nuke helping us out. People always make the difference, in games and in life. And having my good friends to play with mitigates a lot of what I don't like about the game. Plus, honestly, I don't think there is a good MMO at all - they all rely so much on randomness, repetition and concepts that I am not fond of; so this games isn't really any worse than any other.
Anyways, thanks for sticking it out through my rant/review. If you have any thoughts on Marvel, or MMOs in general feel free to leave a comment below.
Let's digress and talk about Diablo 3 for a moment. Diablo 3, and 2 (I never played the first) are all about the loot. While they have some trappings of an RPG - there is experience and leveling and choosing to put points in abilities - all of that is secondary. It's really about the loot. Your abilities can give you a lot of power, but in order to survive in the game you have to get the right equipment. Each piece of armor and every weapon gives bonuses to your base stats and your powers. And all items are not created equal. The most basic ones give a tiny bonus, while the best legendary items give tons of bonuses or even brand new abilities. Without the greatest items, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to defeat the toughest bosses. Your abilities are nice, but if you're standing naked in a field of demons you're dead. You need loot.
Along with the need for loot comes randomness. Each monster drops a random item, each map is randomized in its layout every time you visit, each boss spawns with random abilities. You have control over which abilities you put points into when you level up - and absolutely everything after that is subject to the whims of the random number generator (or RNG). Everything.
Now, I've got a whole 'nother rant about loot stats vs player skill, based on my playing The Lord of the Rings Online actually. But for right now I want to look at randomness. I hate randomness, and I hate it for a variety of reasons...
Randomness is a psychological trick
A system that gives random rewards (in size/composition) at random intervals is commonly called a Skinner Box, after the psychologist who discovered that it was one of the most addictive forms of reward. You never know how many monsters you'll have to kill to get a legendary item, and you never know if the great RNG god will drop a useful legendary item when it does, but there is always the chance that it is that next monster that will have the item you've been looking for/dreaming of. It's a dirty, underhanded way to try to get someone to keep playing. Personally, I have an addictive personality, the kind of brain that falls for this sort of thing really easily. I played an ungodly number of hours of Diablo 2 back in the day, and it could be hard to put down Diablo 3 at times. Of course, almost every MMO is a Skinner Box to some degree, and a good number of other games are too. Still doesn't mean I like or agree with it. You kill x number of monsters and you level up to by y number of skills/abilities from z number of choices. That's the leveling system in a nutshell and it is very fixed, with little randomness, and if it works for a character's powers/abilities I don't know why it couldn't work for equipment as well.
Randomness creates waste
Now, with different quality of loot and multiple attempts needed to find the item you want (the more attempts needed the better the item), the system inherently is wasteful. You will always accumulate "vendor trash" - stuff that you will not use because it is beneath you, and just sell off to an NPC for some equally useless cash, typically. Well, it's not just the item that was wasted - you also wasted your time killing all those monsters and juggling your inventory to sell all that vendor trash. And, frequently, you wasted a lot of time reloading the map to try to find the one randomly spawning monster who might randomly drop the item you wanted in the first place. Waste, waste, waste. God knows I have wasted plenty of my life on my own, I don't need my games helping me.
Randomness creates frustration
Along with all this repetitive waste comes an emotion, frustration. Every gamer has known the pain of grinding through a level or area in search of a widget and not finding it. To have all that time flushed down the toilet is annoying, and when the great RNG god decides to hate you, and you spend hours after hours chasing something and not finding it, it totally sucks. Like smash the keyboard or throw the controller sucks. Spending time is okay, investing time (by doing something that gives a reward or benefit) is good, but wasting time feels terrible.
And then, of course, after spending 10 hours fruitlessly searching for the ultimate widget, you'll see in the chat channel where someone found it in 2 minutes. That always gives you a nice warm glow of thermonuclear rage.
Randomness destroys meaning
Randomness always requires repetition. If there is a 1-in-a-thousand chance of getting something, and you only ever get one chance at it, you'll either not play or immediately be out of chances. To keep this randomness going you have to keep repeating the steps, keep killing just one more monster, one more boss. And, invariably, it will be the same monster and the same bosses. Took down the Kingpen's criminal empire by killing all his thugs and then dealing with him as well as Elektra and Bullseye, good job! But he didn't drop the widget, so wait a second for him to respawn and go do it again. And again. And again.
By having bosses and monsters respawn it destroys all meaning. So what if you killed him, he'll be back. Nothing you do makes any kind of lasting impact on the world. Nothing you do matters - except to you. You finally killed him enough times to get the widget, so things are better in your own little universe. But does the self-centered pursuit of stuff really mean anything? It's not like you can use that new widget to make any changes. Sure, you can finally up the difficulty level, kill a bigger monster; who will then respawn just like the rest. It's one of the funny things about The Lord of the Rings Online, the fellowship's quest will never end, The One Ring will just respawn and somebody else will have to throw it in Mount Doom. Comics are often derided for making death cheap. When a hero, or even villain, dies it is just a matter of time before they come back in one form or another. Death does not matter, nothing matters really. Sad that one of the worst things about a genera can become enshrined in its digital form.
Having just gone over all the things I don't like about randomness, I'll admit that there is something I do like about it...
Randomness creates uncertainty
As soul-crushingly horrible as randomness is, there is one thing it does right - it creates uncertainty. Will this work, or won't it? There's the old saying about the "best laid plans..." and randomness provides that. You have a great plan, kill the monster and take the treasure, but sorry Mario, your princess is in another castle. Uncertainty is good. If you know you're going to win (or even lose) then there is less reason to play. Victory without challenge is hollow, unearned, and failure despite your efforts is beyond frustration.
Uncertainty is what makes the journey work taking. Not knowing means you have to try in order to find out. It gives an impulse, a shot in the arm to take the plunge and go for it. It also keeps you on your toes. Not knowing what is behind the door, around the next corner, if Plan A will work or if you should start warming up Plan E - all of that keeps you thinking, keeps you engaged. And randomness does help create that uncertainty, which is admittedly vital to any enjoyable game.
Now, with the little good for all the bad we get from randomness, the question is how can we create a system that gives us more good than bad? That's an excellent question and one that I do not have a ready answer for. I never tried any of the few "diceless" role-playing games, though the idea does appeal to me. Even in a pen and paper RPG there can be a little too much randomness, though nowhere as bad as in computer games; and why I prefer to play tabletop instead. Single-player computer games tend to have less randomness, the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes game is nothing at all like the Marvel MMO. And honestly with so many people in the same world, I'm not sure how much randomness you can cut out of an MMO. It may just be the nature of the beast. Still, I'd love to see somebody try.
Okay, well, to wrap things up a few more thoughts on the Marvel MMO that I started talking about.
I don't know why they went with a Diablo-clone as a model with the superhero genera except for marketing reasons. While some heroes are all about the gear, like Iron Man, others have very little care about their clothing or stuff, like Cyclops. So the Diablo-loot-centric design feels very off for some of the characters. It's plain ridiculous for others - Captain America has a "shield" slot that lets you equip different shields with different abilities; and this is a character defined by his one-of-a-kind, cannot-be-duplicated piece of equipment ! Likewise Wolverine can equip different claws as if it was that easy to just pop out the old set and switch them for a new model. It is just so stupid if you actually think about it. (I know, I know, thinking bad)
They have over 40 characters, but a fixed pool that you can test run. This sucks because the character you want to play may not be in the list of starting characters to choose from. You can play each starting character to level 10, and can only choose one to reach the level cap (currently 60). So you might really want to play Rogue, but she isn't starting so you either have to shell out real money or play another character and collect the in-game "eternity splinters" that can be used to unlock things for free (well, for time spent playing, really). That kind of sucks. It would be very cool of them to give you x number of trial slots to level 10 and one (or even 2 to be really nice) full slots. As they keep adding more and more characters it's more of an annoyance.
The control scheme also sucks. You have left- and right-mouse-button powers, and then 6 other powers (defaulting to 'A' through 'H' I believe, I changed the scheme myself). All your moving is done by clicking the left mouse button, so there is a key to hold yourself in place since that's also an action/attack button (and so much fun when you kill a bad guy and then casually walk into the middle of the group of other bad guys he was a part of). All your targeting is done by where the mouse is on the screen. It reminds me so much of Guild Wars 2 - both of these games have a limited enough set of abilities that they would be great to use with a controller, and neither has support for a controller. I am a mouse guy. In a typical MMO I use my left hand for the 4 arrow keys to move, and maybe a hotkey to target the nearest enemy. My right hand on the mouse does all the work, it selects and activates abilities. For some reason I have the worst time getting my fingers to hit multiple keys without tripping over themselves. I changed the Marvel scheme to A, S, D for half the abilities and Q, W, E the other half. This lets me put a different finger on each ability, minimizing the screw-ups, and I can move my whole hand to a new row. That helps, but is still nowhere as good as having a controller with 16+ keys available, and each hand able to do different things. I have only played Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360 with a controller, so I know it can be done, and work really well. And getting a controller for a PC is dirt cheap, the one I have is $20 and works great when a game actually supports it.
So, as you can see there is a lot about the game that I am not fond of. However, it can be very fun to play. Cyclops is my main character, and I do love melting everything with red eye-beams. The characters feel different, so you can play more than one and have them all be interesting. It looks pretty, I couldn't play the game on my old laptop. And of course, the biggest reason for playing any game is the people. My friend really likes Iceman, and this is the only game out there with him (in fact, cold-themed characters of any kind are sort of scarce). So he gets to play his favorite X-Man and I get to play mine, and we can play together. We just got Sara into the game too, so we also have an angry little raccoon with a tactical nuke helping us out. People always make the difference, in games and in life. And having my good friends to play with mitigates a lot of what I don't like about the game. Plus, honestly, I don't think there is a good MMO at all - they all rely so much on randomness, repetition and concepts that I am not fond of; so this games isn't really any worse than any other.
Anyways, thanks for sticking it out through my rant/review. If you have any thoughts on Marvel, or MMOs in general feel free to leave a comment below.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Marvel Heroes 2015 Easter Egg Hunt
My friend Aaron got me playing the Marvel Heroes MMO. It's basically Diablo 3 with superheroes, I mean, really. They just started a new event this week in honor of easter, the Easter Egg Hunt - a challenge to find some of the "easter eggs" the developers have put in the game that refer to other people/places and things. I have not been able to find a good list of where to find them, so I decided to start my own. I've only found about half the list so far, but here it is...
If you know where any of the ones I'm missing are, please comment below - or start a forum thread/page of your own so we call all find them. According to some people in the chat, treasure rooms are apparently random spawns, so you may have to switch difficulty level or characters to reset the map if one isn't appearing.
UPDATE: Emma Hartley posted a great link in the comments to a forum page with all the locations.
LATEST UPDATE: I've gotten all of these except for Agent Donais, been spamming X-defense solo and still no luck. This is why I hate games that rely on random number crap - I don't love this game so much that I want to play it for hours and hours just to hopefully get one lucky spawn or drop. I'll keep trying from time to time, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy over it - I could be re-writing 13th Age instead ;)
- Recruit S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Karl Patrick
- Break into Bajillion World Headquarters
- Thrash Thrill-Kill Karin
- Frag Flash-Bang Bridget
- Interrogate Criminal Mastermind Geoff Tuffli
- Interrupt Production of Romeo and Juliet
- Grab a Drink at the Power Plant
- Purify Brother Ryolnir
- Cut in Line for Bubble Tea
- Beatdown Baron von Lind
- Extirpate Hybrid Agent Donais
- End Lonely Trevor's Ennui
- Keelhaul Che Luck
If you know where any of the ones I'm missing are, please comment below - or start a forum thread/page of your own so we call all find them. According to some people in the chat, treasure rooms are apparently random spawns, so you may have to switch difficulty level or characters to reset the map if one isn't appearing.
UPDATE: Emma Hartley posted a great link in the comments to a forum page with all the locations.
LATEST UPDATE: I've gotten all of these except for Agent Donais, been spamming X-defense solo and still no luck. This is why I hate games that rely on random number crap - I don't love this game so much that I want to play it for hours and hours just to hopefully get one lucky spawn or drop. I'll keep trying from time to time, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy over it - I could be re-writing 13th Age instead ;)
Friday, December 19, 2014
Addiction Is Not Gameplay - I'm Looking At You Diablo
I've been playing Diablo 3 recently, and also played Diablo 2 in the past (never did play the first one though). I don't really like Diablo 3, the only reason I'm still playing it is that it's one of the very few games where you can play with a friend on the couch (who do so many games let you play with people on the other side of the world but not right next to you?). So the three of us have been grinding away characters. I've got a level 70 Crusader, Monk, Witch Doctor, Wizard, and Barbarian - my Demon Hunter is only level 55. Also got up to Paragon 83 and completed 61% of all the challenges in the game. Which, for those who have not played, means I've put a pretty good amount of time into a game that I don't really like. And while there are a bunch of reasons I don't like the game, one in particular I want to ramble on about for a few paragraphs - because it's relevent to my ongoing 13th Age campaign in a way.
The Diablo series is really about one thing, collecting loot. Yes, it has classes and levels and some RPG-like trappings, which don't mean much. A naked character is impossible to play, since all your skills do damage based on your weapon - you at least need a rusty nail to channel magic through or stab someone with. The bulk of your fighting ability comes from your gear, and the whole point of the game is to replay levels killing bigger monsters to get bigger gear. It is a very well-designed skinner box: random rewards at random intervals produce the most addictive behavior.
Now, as someone who has struggled with mental illness, namely depression but I've got plenty of other issues, I really don't appreciate game designers who deliberately design addictive behavior into their games. It's a part of why I like crafting, it is a system of clear goals and deliberate creation instead of the "random loot drop" paradigm in most games. It's also why I don't play most of the MMOs I used to play, eventually they tend to devolve into random loot drop timesink grinding as well. If a friend is playing I'll hop on with them (and if I had more friends I might play more)(though what I lack in quantity of friends I make up for in quality). But by and large when the game has run out of new experiences and story it just devolves into mindless addiction collecting, at which point I need to stop playing. Like I said at the beginning, I played Diablo 2, and didn't know about skinner boxes or appreciate my own mental issues at the time, and I spent hundreds of hours on it. Well, no, say wasted hundreds of hours on it. Because ultimately, when you have grind-ed the very best of all gear for all your inventory slots and reached the pinnacle of power, what the hell do you do? When killing the monsters is easy and offers no new reward, why keep playing? Where are you at the end? In a story-based adventure, you reach the end, you face the final boss, save the world, get the girl, and ride off into the sunset (weather you want to or not, damn you Fallout: New Vegas). There is resolution, closure. In a loot-grind like Diablo or most MMOs you don't end by killing the final boss, you've already killed him/her/it hundreds or thousands of times to try to grind a new shiny.
Now, I mentioned that this was related to my 13th Age campaign. See, what hit me was that as a GM I had been falling into the same sort of grinding rut myself - but this time inflicting it on my players. I tend to be the oddball GM, the guy who runs the game when we don't have any characters, have some new people, and want to start playing right now. I have developed a formula to deal with 30 minutes of prep time while my new group is making characters, I pick 5 groups of monsters and throw a veneer of story as to why the party would be fighting them. It is not deep, but when my own players have no concept of their characters (since we usually throw them together at that moment and most games don't have you do a lot of character-building during character creation, Fate being about the only real game that does with its Aspects) and usually we are not in any published setting (I've literally never played in the Forgotten Realms in about 30 years of D&D except for a computer game) so this is a fast and dirty way to give everybody something to do. Every game really has clear rules for "kill the monsters" and that is a pretty easy story to craft.
The problem is that this is loot grinding in a slightly different form, 'monster grinding' if you will. After playing the very long Rise of the Runelords campaign that was pretty boring overall, I really want to do something better, something deeper for my players and me. What sucks is that requires a lot of prep time and creativity. Thankfully we are now in a fixed situation, I know the characters involved, and each player has crafted some backstory to their characters (the One Unique Thing and Icon Relationships are great in 13th Age for helping to actually build characters instead of just combat roles) and we are committed to playing these characters for a while (11 more game sessions).
But what still sucks is that while the game has lots of clear and detailed rules for how to kill monsters, it hand-waves everything else. I want our next adventure to be somewhat of a mystery. Something bad is going to happen, its been fated to happen so my little 3rd level players can't stop it - but then can mitigate it. If they can figure it out beforehand and prepare themselves, then they can reduce the damage done and make their lives easier in upcoming adventures. They just have to solve who is going to do the bad thing and where and how, in the few days before it happens. Our first adventure was a pretty straight monster crawl except that the final boss monster wasn't really a bad guy and didn't need to be killed. Our second adventure had a series of rooms/encounters that were riddles to solve. So hopefully we are on a nice trend of doing things other than monster-killing (though we will get back to that in adventure 4, which is basically a dungeon-crawl with a few twists). Creating this has been a headache though. "Just role-play it" sounds like great advise, but this isn't a movie where we are all watching and waiting for the big reveal at the end; this is an RPG where the players have to do the hard work to figure out what the big reveal is at the end. And "role-playing game" has two complimentary parts, "role-playing" and "game." Games have rules, without rules they are just make-believe. And rules are good because they provide a foundation, a box if you will, that players can play inside or outside of. I think it was Joe Haldeman who once wrote "Art thrives on restriction." He was talking about how people would ask him to write a story for them, which he was happy to do - but they had to give him something, some event or concept or seed to work from and build off of. I think that principle applies very well to RPGs. The rules are not a straight-jacket, they are a spring-board (well, as long as you don't have too many rules, eventually rules bloat will crush anybody).
So this post has turned into an epic ramble, let me try to pull my thoughts together. Making a grind is easy, weather by just adding more loot or more monsters. But is that enough? Maybe for a one-shot pick-up game it is, but for a long-term campaign that you want your players to be invested in I'm not so sure. However, making non-combat and -loot activities is hard, most games do not support that very well and you are left with creating your own system of rules or trusting in your acting ability. Still, I think it is a worthwhile goal. Addiction is not gameplay, as I noted at the beginning; merely repeating the same actions in hopes of better loot or a higher level is a pretty small goal for something as vast and creative as an RPG. I wish I had a great system or advise on how to make deeper games, but I've got my hands full trying to figure it out myself (before next Monday when we play again).
The Diablo series is really about one thing, collecting loot. Yes, it has classes and levels and some RPG-like trappings, which don't mean much. A naked character is impossible to play, since all your skills do damage based on your weapon - you at least need a rusty nail to channel magic through or stab someone with. The bulk of your fighting ability comes from your gear, and the whole point of the game is to replay levels killing bigger monsters to get bigger gear. It is a very well-designed skinner box: random rewards at random intervals produce the most addictive behavior.
Now, as someone who has struggled with mental illness, namely depression but I've got plenty of other issues, I really don't appreciate game designers who deliberately design addictive behavior into their games. It's a part of why I like crafting, it is a system of clear goals and deliberate creation instead of the "random loot drop" paradigm in most games. It's also why I don't play most of the MMOs I used to play, eventually they tend to devolve into random loot drop timesink grinding as well. If a friend is playing I'll hop on with them (and if I had more friends I might play more)(though what I lack in quantity of friends I make up for in quality). But by and large when the game has run out of new experiences and story it just devolves into mindless addiction collecting, at which point I need to stop playing. Like I said at the beginning, I played Diablo 2, and didn't know about skinner boxes or appreciate my own mental issues at the time, and I spent hundreds of hours on it. Well, no, say wasted hundreds of hours on it. Because ultimately, when you have grind-ed the very best of all gear for all your inventory slots and reached the pinnacle of power, what the hell do you do? When killing the monsters is easy and offers no new reward, why keep playing? Where are you at the end? In a story-based adventure, you reach the end, you face the final boss, save the world, get the girl, and ride off into the sunset (weather you want to or not, damn you Fallout: New Vegas). There is resolution, closure. In a loot-grind like Diablo or most MMOs you don't end by killing the final boss, you've already killed him/her/it hundreds or thousands of times to try to grind a new shiny.
Now, I mentioned that this was related to my 13th Age campaign. See, what hit me was that as a GM I had been falling into the same sort of grinding rut myself - but this time inflicting it on my players. I tend to be the oddball GM, the guy who runs the game when we don't have any characters, have some new people, and want to start playing right now. I have developed a formula to deal with 30 minutes of prep time while my new group is making characters, I pick 5 groups of monsters and throw a veneer of story as to why the party would be fighting them. It is not deep, but when my own players have no concept of their characters (since we usually throw them together at that moment and most games don't have you do a lot of character-building during character creation, Fate being about the only real game that does with its Aspects) and usually we are not in any published setting (I've literally never played in the Forgotten Realms in about 30 years of D&D except for a computer game) so this is a fast and dirty way to give everybody something to do. Every game really has clear rules for "kill the monsters" and that is a pretty easy story to craft.
The problem is that this is loot grinding in a slightly different form, 'monster grinding' if you will. After playing the very long Rise of the Runelords campaign that was pretty boring overall, I really want to do something better, something deeper for my players and me. What sucks is that requires a lot of prep time and creativity. Thankfully we are now in a fixed situation, I know the characters involved, and each player has crafted some backstory to their characters (the One Unique Thing and Icon Relationships are great in 13th Age for helping to actually build characters instead of just combat roles) and we are committed to playing these characters for a while (11 more game sessions).
But what still sucks is that while the game has lots of clear and detailed rules for how to kill monsters, it hand-waves everything else. I want our next adventure to be somewhat of a mystery. Something bad is going to happen, its been fated to happen so my little 3rd level players can't stop it - but then can mitigate it. If they can figure it out beforehand and prepare themselves, then they can reduce the damage done and make their lives easier in upcoming adventures. They just have to solve who is going to do the bad thing and where and how, in the few days before it happens. Our first adventure was a pretty straight monster crawl except that the final boss monster wasn't really a bad guy and didn't need to be killed. Our second adventure had a series of rooms/encounters that were riddles to solve. So hopefully we are on a nice trend of doing things other than monster-killing (though we will get back to that in adventure 4, which is basically a dungeon-crawl with a few twists). Creating this has been a headache though. "Just role-play it" sounds like great advise, but this isn't a movie where we are all watching and waiting for the big reveal at the end; this is an RPG where the players have to do the hard work to figure out what the big reveal is at the end. And "role-playing game" has two complimentary parts, "role-playing" and "game." Games have rules, without rules they are just make-believe. And rules are good because they provide a foundation, a box if you will, that players can play inside or outside of. I think it was Joe Haldeman who once wrote "Art thrives on restriction." He was talking about how people would ask him to write a story for them, which he was happy to do - but they had to give him something, some event or concept or seed to work from and build off of. I think that principle applies very well to RPGs. The rules are not a straight-jacket, they are a spring-board (well, as long as you don't have too many rules, eventually rules bloat will crush anybody).
So this post has turned into an epic ramble, let me try to pull my thoughts together. Making a grind is easy, weather by just adding more loot or more monsters. But is that enough? Maybe for a one-shot pick-up game it is, but for a long-term campaign that you want your players to be invested in I'm not so sure. However, making non-combat and -loot activities is hard, most games do not support that very well and you are left with creating your own system of rules or trusting in your acting ability. Still, I think it is a worthwhile goal. Addiction is not gameplay, as I noted at the beginning; merely repeating the same actions in hopes of better loot or a higher level is a pretty small goal for something as vast and creative as an RPG. I wish I had a great system or advise on how to make deeper games, but I've got my hands full trying to figure it out myself (before next Monday when we play again).
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Master Of Orion 2 - Possibly the best game ever
I never did play the first Mater Of Orion, and I only played the third one once - it did not impress me. However, Master Of Orion 2 is a game I have played off and on for I don't know how many years. It, along with Starcraft and Diablo 2 and others, are games I have cherished and periodically returned to, despite all the newer and prettier games I've played since.
For anyone who might not know the game, a quick rundown. MOO2 is a 4X game, that is, explore, expand, exterminate and something I can't remember. You start with one little planet in a big, less than friendly galaxy. You have several options for victory. You can get elected as president of the galaxy, or you can wipe out to the last being (and/or enslave) every other race in the galaxy. Or you can fight the dreaded Antarans, a very unfriendly race that lives in another dimension and pops out occasionally to attack anything in sight. To win, by whatever means, you have to produce food for each colony, research and build technology, juggle colonizing new planets while supporting and protecting the ones you own. You have some basic diplomacy (mostly placate your enemies to keep them from attacking until you're ready to crush them later). There is a lot of mouse-clicking, oh goodness is there a lot of mouse-clicking. Pouring over menus and trees and buttons to micro-manage your colonies only gets harder and harder as the game progresses.
For the second time now I've achieved my goal of populating the entire galaxy. That's been my own, unofficial victory condition. Every planet has a size, limiting how many people can live on it, and a terrain type. Barren worlds are like the moon, airless. Terran worlds are like Earth, while Ocean and Arid worlds are wetter or dryer respectively. Radiated worlds are like Barren but they also get hit with radiation that makes maintaining your colony more expensive, though you can research a radiation shield that turns them into just Barren. The type of planetary terrain can be improved through Terraforming, which is a semi-difficult research project. Terraforming moves any world from Barren one step closer to Terran. Then, a much bigger research project allows Gaia Transformation, which turns the planet into a veritable garden of eden. But then there are the Toxic worlds, which you can't do anything with. Oddly, Toxic is the only type that cannot be improved, no Terraforming, no Gaia, nothing. Some time back, when I was playing more often, I got the idea in my head to turn every planet into a Gaia paradise. You can also turn Gas Giants and Asteroid Belts into Barren planets, so I decided to do that too. Every world must be perfect and fully populated, that was going to be my own victory condition. I ignored the Toxic worlds since I couldn't do anything with them (you can colonize them, but barely). It takes a really long time during which you have to fend off, and eventually defeat, any other races plus weather the Antaran attacks (which become negligible late-game). Mostly, you have to micro-manage a whole heck of a lot of colonies, setting up each one just right to be self-supporting and armed to the teeth.
For some reason I decided to play it again. Amazingly it works fine on my Windows 8 laptop (it's a Win95 game, am I dating myself or what?). I always make a custom race. You can build a race by spending points, taking some disadvantages gives you more advantages. For disadvantages I took reduced farming, and penalties to spying, ground combat and ship defense/offense. Farming is a big deal at the beginning of the game, but it's pretty easy to research tech that lets 4 farmers feed 42 people (mind you, each "person" is 1,000,000 individuals). Ground combat is something that never happens to me, I arm my colonies with the most advanced weapons so few ships survive trying to land - plus I can off-set this with another advantage and build it up with technology. Spying is another that can be off-set or built up easy enough, and I play with few enemies so I can make my own spies to counter theirs before we meet. Ship combat is a negligible penalty, it's really easy to build advanced targeting computers that hit anything you want, or just build more ships than the other guy can field. For advantages I always take Creative, I've never played the game without it actually. MOO2 has a pretty big research tree, and normally you only get to select a few things to invent/develop. With Creative however, you get everything - and while investing in technology is slow, by the end of the game it makes you very, very powerful. I also always take Subterranean, it lets you have more people on every planet, since your race lives partially below-ground; it also off-sets the ground combat penalty. That leaves enough points for one more advantage, and it varies every time I play. Telepathic is nice, you can mind-control enemy colonies and instantly take them over, and it gives a bonus to spying that off-sets the penalty I take. Cybernetic lets you eat only half as much food, the other half comes from your production/industry, which helps off-set the farming penalty, though its mostly just useful at the start of the game. Omniscient lets you see every planet without having to fly a ship to it, and it makes it a lot easier to plan how you want to grow for the future. Which I take depends on my mood, I went Cybernetic for this last game (plus something else).
For this last game I fudged a bit, I made the game as favorable as possible. While there is a difficulty setting, and I always play Hard (the Impossible level is aptly named), the biggest challenge is how many races are in the game. I set it at only 2, so me and one AI opponent. That is very favorable for a Creative race, since it takes a long time to meet the other guy I was able to build up my tech tree much higher than he did. Also, my opponent turned out to be the Bulrathi, who are great ground combat fighters, but his ships were pathetic and had no chance of getting past my colony's defenses. You can see every star, but not the planets in that system until you fly there. Some systems however, the ones with the biggest and best planets of course, are 'protected' by space monsters. Crystals, dragons, worms, amoebas - all kinds of mean critters who like to munch on starships. But a long time ago I read a little hint that has worked great. Normally you would wait until you could build a bigger and better ship to fight the space monsters, but there is a way to do it with just a few little ships. You can arm your ships with missiles, and they have a certain number of shots. But if you take only 2 shots, you can buy the MIRV advantage, where each missle carries 4 warheads - thus doing 8 shots worth of damage in only 2. Turns out almost no monster can survive being hit by 5 of these ships (destroyers, each with 6 of these missiles, so a grand total of 240 missiles worth of damage) and they are very easy to make. That's not really a cheat, just the most efficent way to get to the best planets.
So after 695 turns I had colonized the entire galaxy (except the nasty toxic planets) with a total population of 3,976 (the largest planet had only 42, I didn't count exactly how many planets I had colonized). Each planet was a paradise, fully built and equipped with protective armaments, heavy industry, scientific research, more food than anybody could eat, and zero taxes. I am a benevolent dictator. I wiped out the Antarans in a fairly tough fight, but I only took 12 ships against them, and not the biggest I could build, just to have a bit of a challenge. I could have easily flown 20 Doom Stars with Stellar Converters (read: Death Stars) and wiped the floor with them in half the time, but that wouldn't have been as interesting. I shudder to think of how many hours I played in real time, but it did only take 3 days (which I did do other stuff in). And while this was the second time I've colonized the entire galaxy, I've played this game more times and years that I can count. It's just so much fun. I've never been able to find another game like it that I've enjoyed as much, though for some time now I've been focusing on free games and this style is pretty complicated for an indie developer. There is a Free Orion, that re-created MOO, but it does not like my computer (think I need to try updating my video drivers, and so far I've had other things to do the limited time I have with the library's internet). Still, this is a good reminder that super cool graphics are not the end-all be-all of a fun computer game. I have a few old DOS and early Windows games that I still like to play. Star Craft, Diablo 2, Wasteland, Planet's Edge, Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 are way more fun than their MMO counterpart, IMHO.
Anyways, just a note of affection for an old game, one that I'll no doubt be playing even more years from now.
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