Initial Impressions: Archeage

Whoa. Where did Archeage come from and why did I not know about it? It is has so many things I've wanted from an MMO. Housing? Check and its non-instanced. Territory control? Check. Open world PvP? Check. Boats? Check. Pirates? Check. Beautifully rendered breasts? Discount double check.

I've had a couple weeks now to play around with Archeage and I've determined two things: I'm going to like this game and I'm going to hate this game. It is that sort of love/hate relationship one has with their spouse. On one hand you love the idea of them, but on the other hand there are some details and quirks that are going to drive you crazy which in an odd roundabout way are what seal the deal.

The first item to be noticed is the ! and ?. I am still surprised to this day by this staple that seems to have been set by the behemoth World of Warcraft. Yet, it is intimately familiar to me at this point in my gaming life and I fell right into the rhythm of hopping from quest hub to quest hub. The quest design is basic: go here and kill X rats. In fact, Archeage’s base quests make any quest in the original World of Warcraft look like a masterpiece in comparison. Archeage quests are serviceable, but are uninspired. They serve best as a guide from area to area and as a medium to introduce some game mechanics. Past that the quests are painfully bland. Fortunately I’ve yet to find a quest that takes more than a matter of minutes to clear.

While doing quests it does not take long for a player to run face first into the labor point system of Archeage. Again, the love/hate relationship becomes apparent. In simplest terms the labor point system is a tertiary “mana pool” which allows players to complete actions. At first it seems like the system is limited to crafting and gathering as both require the use of labor points. However, it doesn’t take long to realize that labor points are a means for Archeage to artificially slow down players; specifically those not paying to play.

For a non-subscriber labor points are only regained while actively online. For subscribers, called patrons, labor points refresh while offline as well. Labor points are used for gathering, crafting, and most unfortunately for basic loot acquisition. Enemies drop coin purses which require labor points to open. As a non-subscriber I have hundreds of unopened coin purses. Labor points are a constant reminder that I’m not paying to play the game and are a limiting factor at every turn.

Yet, with all the negatives of the labor point system it is still conceptually brilliant. In fact, I fully applaud the system in regards to crafting. It makes gathering and crafting into a community project. No single player has the labor points to drive an entire industry. Time and number of participants is as important as actual components. Losses incurred on the open seas or in defeat can have actual weight. At a high level I cannot yet verify how the system plays out, but at face value it is promising and something I’d like to see developed further in the MMO sphere.

Another feature that new players run into fairly quickly is the housing system of Archeage. Throughout the world there are plots where players can place houses and gardens. An experienced MMO player will quickly realize these areas for what they are but I suspect newer players to MMO could wander through them without a clue in the world that what they are seeing is completely player driven. I don’t have many details on how the housing system works, but I do know it’s one of my goals playing. From chat channel spam about plots being sold to online arguments about hackers stealing plots it is evident that housing is serious business in Archeage.

Speaking of details; that is one of Archeage’s biggest weaknesses. The game provides the little in explanation in either pop ups or in game feedback systems. Yes, the basics are explained, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked something which cost me precious labor points which had I known would cost me labor points I’d never have clicked on.

There are other things that don’t make much sense. The Auction House is poorly explained and clearly subject to the abuse of bots that can outbid at the last moments of every auction. There are vendors for everything which makes me wonder how weakened the end game economy is in regards to player production. If everything I need can be purchased via a vendor and then grown in my own garden or a public garden somewhere then why would I ever look to the economy to provide me these items.

I’ll be honest that there is A LOT for me to learn about the game. I haven’t even touched PvP. My experience of boating is limited to a single quest. I don’t know why my mount has to gain experience. I see folks rolling around in tractors and at a level I know they are performing trade runs of some sort. I see flashes in the chat log that areas are going to war. I see senior artisans proclaiming their 45,000+ crafting skill level and looking for work. I watch Youtube videos of epic open seas warfare between pirates and non-pirates. I hear there are castle sieges and I see LFG broadcasts for folks going to war. I think I’m part of a certain faction but that’s not really clearly explained during character creation. I have randomly seen “reds” in towns I’ve been to which has resulted in a flood of whooping and hollering.

There appears to be a lot of things I will like in Archeage. I just need to get through the leveling and gearing up and determine how much I can enjoy as a free 2 play member of Archeage society. If I am driven to subscription in order to capitalize on many of the features I want to enjoy then the deal is likely broken. If through my moderate play time I can remain free 2 play then I am likely to stick around and drop a few dollars here and there on transactions.

Long time, no post

Good question.  What do I do here?  It certainly isn't anything to do with posting bout playing video games anymore.  Of course I haven't played much of any video game lately.  My time in Guild Wars 2 is just flipping items on the trading post to amass gold I will never spend.  My Solforge time is just for the daily rewards.  I've given up playing Solforge due to the rate at which cards are released and the inability to efficiently collect them to keep pace with the trending deck archtypes.  Ditto that sentiment for Hearthstone.

So what would you say I do here?  I'd like to know if anyone is still awake out there in blogger land.

Guild Wars 2: Trait Guide by Level and Zone

With the recent changes to Guild Wars 2 the process to acquire traits changed from a model of buying skill books at certain levels to gathering the traits from the world via various means.  The traits are available still from a vendor but they cost gold and skill points; both of which are sparse for the average player in Guild Wars 2.  Fortunately a reddit poster has put together an excellent guide for the traits broken down by zone and level.

The text is inserted after the jump:

Guild Wars 2 MEGASERVER Impressions

The Guild Wars 2 April 2014 feature pack (aka patch aka update aka the "new" shiny) hit clients this week and along with it Arena Net unleashed the MEGASERVER (yes; you have to type it in all caps because it contains the word MEGA).  Now, the technology has not enveloped all zones at this time, but a few zones got the early MEGASERVER treatment.  I was able to venture into the MEGA version of Brisban Wildlands and experience the technology first hand.  Here are my impressions.

"WTF!? someone just helped me back up"  The statement was odd for me to make in /map chat.  I had spent a lot of time in the Brisban Wildlands as of late eating dirt and it was fairly odd to have another player present to help me back up this time.  There simply wasn't supposed to be more than a few players in this zone at any given time and there certainly wasn't supposed to be any working on the event the same event at the same time.  Let alone was there supposed to be one there to save my warrior from a tough tangle with a veteran.

In fact, Brisban Wildlands was hopping.  It was a happening place, if such a thing means something.  I was absolutely in awe of the number of players moving through the zone and elated at the pace of events occurring.  My map was full of orange circles and rapidly depleting orange bars appeared in my notification area.

What kind of bizarro world was I in?  This wasn't Queensland!  This wasn't a living event zone!  This was the boring and forgotten Brisban Wildlands!  There shouldn't be anything more than those one or two newbie Asura players that don't know any better!  Truth be told I was learning very quickly that the MEGASERVER technology was at work ensuring my lonely adventuring was no more.

Color me impressed with the MEGASERVER.  It was my most anticipated feature with the patch (unlike the majority that were hyped on the wardrobe system which has turned into a complete mess post-patch) and it has lived up to my expectations.  It is a truly marvelous change for the game and Arena Net should make sure 100% of their effort is placed behind rolling this out to every zone in the game.  I can't help but believe there are players leaving every day because they get sick of boring game play in empty zones.  Dynamic events sell Guild Wars 2 and with zones full of people those events are almost always happening.

In conclusion, the MEGASERVER is MEGA awesome.

Guild Wars 2 MEGA MEGA MEGA MEGA SERVER

THIS SUNDAY ONLY.  MONSTER MONSTER MONSTER TR... OOPS I MEAN... MEGA MEGA MEGA SERVER!

If this was posted on a April 1st I would have suspected shenanigans, but as it is now April the second and impossible for me to be tricked any longer I must declare that the Guild Wars 2 Megaserver is a real thing.  Traditional MMO servers are gone and in their place is one super megaserver that will host all users via various instances of each zone.  World vs World vs World will still be separated along old server assignments.  This is an exciting change for Guild Wars 2.

First it is worth noting that this is NOT equivalent to EVE Online's single universe.  In EVE there is only one copy of each "zone".  In Guild Wars 2 (GW2) the world size is limited so there will be copies of each zone which will be referred to as instances.  It would be crazy to even think about all GW2 players being stuck in the same tiny maps.

The biggest benefit to this systems is that lower popularity zones will now be more populated.  As I've recently returned to Guild Wars 2 after a hiatus from video gaming in general (and this blog if you've noticed my lack of 2014 activity) I immediately noticed how few folks were in the starting and mid-level zones.  Aside from the "champ trains" rolling over Queensland I was pretty much flying solo on my warrior and necromancer on the dynamic events.  That certainly doesn't feel massive or multiplayer.

The apparent downside is trying to get grouped correctly with your friends and guild mates, but Arena Net seems to have some plans to avoid this problem.  Players will be able to join parties and then get placed in the same instance of a zone as their fellow party members.  The overall system will aggregate data on players such as language preference, playing habits with guild members of friends, and every time a zone is entered those variables will be weighed to hopefully place the player in the most logical instance.  For a solo player like myself this won't really matter other than the fact I may actually see a friendly face and get to complete some of the harder events in the less visited zones.

There is a great chart from Arena Net's testing of the system showing the increase in player activity per map instance (yes that is +225% for each map instance on average):

Metric	Change
Average population per map copy	+225%
Player goes to the same map as his or her party	+25%
Average population from the same party as the player on joined map	+36%
Average population from the same guild as the player on joined map	+5%
Average population from the same home world as the player on joined map	+6%
Average population speaking the same language as the player on joined map	+41%

Tagging along with that this addresses one of my biggest heartaches with Guild Wars 2 and it's dynamic events system.  So much of my playing time was spent in the same zone because that is where the players were and that is where the events were being chained together.  It was a terribly boring existence in almost any other zone.  Now at least there is hope that every zone will be packed with players as I suspect worldwide there will always be a good number of folks looking to be in every zone of the game.  It will be very cool to experience a new trip to level 80 on my new characters than what I experienced last time I leveled to 80 by literally never moving outside of Kessex Hills and Harathi Highlands.

The most amazing part about this change is that it is not the only big change happening for Guild Wars 2 this month.  There are several big system changes slated for the April 15th patch.  It is indeed an exciting time to be playing Guild Wars 2 (though I still maintain the combat is crap... but I can still have fun with it).

Viewed: Free 2 Play

Long time, no post.  Yes, this is my first post of 2014.

Free to Play, Valve's documentary trailing the stories of various competitors from DOTA2's first global tournament dubbed "The International", is now available for viewing on Steam.  I had a chance to watch it this weekend and wanted to share some thoughts.

From outside view one might mistake this as just advertainment for DOTA2, but just a few minutes into the film it is very apparent that this is much more a human interest story about eSports and the athletes that pursue them than it is anything about DOTA2.  In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anything of interest from the actual game of DOTA2.

With the actual game out of the way we are left with a very well shot and edited  documentary that follows several of the players through the trials and tribulations of competing in the first million+ dollar tournament.  True to the name of the tournament, players from different countries are followed.

The film does an excellent job of giving watchers a glimpse not only into the lives of professional gamers, but also the culture surrounding those players in their home countries.  It is every interesting to see how the gaming culture is perceived in Asian countries vs countries in the west.  However, even with dramatically different cultural movements in regards to eSport gaming there was a consistent trend of doubting family members, specifically parents.  Yes, even in the gaming obsessed China the athletes mothers and fathers were just as disappointed in their children's investment into professional gaming at the cost of traditional education as the parents from the USA.

The core message of the film seems to be sacrifice.  The sacrifices are well documented throughout the film and whether its a lost girlfriend, a missed semester of school, or hard thoughts of a father no longer with a son they all hit home with the viewer.  These are real people pursuing a dream and I think most people can identify with that rare opportunity so few of use get to take that we can't help but cheer on those being followed in the film.

Of course it all comes crashing down for most of the competitors.  Most teams left The International with nothing more than expensive bills for plane tickets, hotels, and meals.  Unlike traditional sports there is no salary being earned by most eSport athletes.  If the team doesn't win, they don't get paid.  This adds up to interesting and heartwarming realizations from the participants after the tournament has come and gone.  There is in fact more to life than just games.

I can't recommend this documentary enough to gamers and nongamers alike.

Embedded copy below:

Broken hearts

Christmas 2013

Out with a whimper

Warhammer Online is no more.  I have mixed emotions and debated over the end of this week what to post.  There is no game that I have ever invested so much time in prior to it's release only to give up playing it a short few months after release.  I never felt ripped off by WAR.  My money was well spent for the experiences I had.  However, the game just never lived up to any of it's potential.

In reflection I look back on my first level 40 ding from WAR:

Solforge grumblings

Look, I really like Solforge.  No, I really do.  So you should probably just ignore this post.

But in the interest of typing out my thoughts: Solforge is utterly broken and imbalanced.  There is a two deck meta.  It is Steelforged Avatar decks or Nekrium/Tempys burn decks.  I'm not even sure if these are the best titles for the decks.

In the case of N/T burn decks the power comes from the Flameshaper Savant and it's ability to toss out ridiculous amounts of direct damage from every card that gets played.  Throw in cards like Master of Elements and Spark that allow for extra cards to be played each turn and it's trivial, at best, to win a long string of games against any other decks.




Well, except for Steelforged Avatar decks which are powered by, yep you guessed it, Steelforged Avatar.  The Avatar cycle is very simple: X Avatar gains plus health and attack equal to the number of same-faction cards in hand.  This is perfectly acceptable until you take into consideration that the Steelforged Avatar is the Alloyin faction's avatar.  The same Alloyin faction that happens to feature Ghox, Metamind Paragon and the free to play after level 2 Energy Surge which means you can roll out 30/30 bad asses for the same cost paid by any other deck for a horribly, not even fucking close, equivalent cost in cards and investment over the course of the game.

Throw in Alloyin's dominant control cards like Energy Prison and Metasculpt or even more insane, the out of play card leveling cards such as Technosmith and you very quickly can see how insane a Steelforged Avatar deck can get with just the Alloyin cards.  Throw in a splash of Chrogias and BOOM.

So whats at the root of the problem here?  Is it deck synergy winning out in a small card pool?  This would make sense as both Steelforged Avatar and Flameshaper Savants are part of their respective cycles and happen to be the only avatar and savant that gel perfectly with the current cards in game.  Yet, I can't really seem to convince myself this is the case.  It just feels like something else is amiss.

Tonight I think I've hit on the underlying issue.  It's actually mechanics combined with the way these cards are built.  Solforge does not have resources such as lands in Magic the Gathering or mana in Hearthstone.  Regardless of the power level of the cards being played, a Solforge player gets to play two cards per turn.  This means the cards that are chosen to be played need to always be high-value, best of cards because there is no "cost difference" between playing a level 1 Swampmoss Lurker and a level 3 Chrogias.  With the limitation for playing cards being only the number of cards that get played, then it is only obvious that the few cards that give "extra" plays are thus going to be the most powerful and empower the most powerful combos.

Steelforged Avatar doesn't break Solforge, but the likes of Ghox and Energy Surge do.  Both give draw advantage in a game where the player's deck infinitely recycles itself with stronger and stronger versions of cards.  Steelforged Avatars almost always have the right card to play and a hell of a bomb to drop at any time in the Steelforged Avatar that benefits from Alloyin cards in hand.

Flameshaper Savant doesn't break Solforge, but the likes of Master of Elements and Spark do.  Both give additional plays which in turn trigger additional direct damage hits from Flameshaper.  Since Flameshaper's ability can hit the player it only takes a couple in play to quickly burn down any opponent.

So the question and debate that needs to be had for Solforge is whether or not cards that give power through extra plays can exist in the game without fundamentally breaking the game by being the dominant strategy.  Right now, I can't even tell you the last time I faced a Uterra deck, let alone the last time I played a game that didn't feature Steelforged Avatar or Flameshaper.  This is not good to have such a stale metagame this early in the game's life, especially one that feels like it is stale because of flawed mechanics which can only get worse the more and more cards that are released to be abused by these flaws.