Asymmetry in game design

I was reading this article over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun about Blight of the Immortals when one of the developers responses struck me as interesting. 

RPS: Hmm. The starting positions for both your games, particular the PvP in Blight, seems uneven. Position, resources – that can all give you a better or worse start. Is that deliberate?

Kyburz: I really love Starcraft but one thing I don’t like about it is that everybody starts on an even playing field. The sides are carefully balanced and each player starts with the same amount of resources and access points.

Most people would say this is absolutely critical, but I would argue that is actually makes that game more difficult and less enjoyable for new players, limits the number of interesting strategies for experienced players, and reduces the amount of player interaction.

As a long time MMOG player, I've had my fair share of arguments about balance.  In the decade I've argued about balance I've landed firmly in the middle.  I want balance, but only if it is asymmetrical.  Like the developer being interviewed, I find the Starcraft approach where both sides start on equal footing uninteresting.

This reminds me a lot about the discussion regarding racial abilities prior to World of Warcraft's launch.  Originally, races (and even classes) were going to have very unique traits.  Taurens were going to have plains running for sprinting over open plains.  Paladins were going to do more damage to undead, including players.  However, Blizzard pulled the plug on this idea and neutered the racial abilities into fairly meaningless afterthoughts; some more worthless than others (anyone that played a Troll or Dwarf at launch know exactly what I mean).

Its one of those "I wonder what it would be like..." moments that I look back on.  How different would WoW have been had the races and some classes kept their unique asymmetrical features?  How critical is this for the Blizzard design mantra: "easy to play, hard to master"?

Back to the interview, the asymmetrical starting resources definitely has me interested in Blight of the Immortals.  I couldn't get into this developer's first game, Neptune's Pride, as it was terribly unfriendly to new players (not challenging, but more just basic explanation of how you even played the game).  If I manage to kick my Minecraft habit (doubtful), I may get around to playing a few games.

#Minecraft: The Monster Trap

From my previous post I got some feedback asking about my monster trap.  Don't want to go into much detail, but here are some pretty pictures.  Ask any questions you have.

Left: Trap on ground and spawn box above.  Right: Loot house.

View from the loot house, spawn box in the background.

Under the loot house is a pressure plate that is wired to the redstone torch on the roof.  When loot activates the pressure plate, it lights up the torch on the roof and I know to go collect.  The cactus is to kill any chickens or pigs that get past the trap (which happens a lot).

This is the trap.  It was poorly planned so the water is not efficient.  Simple really, water flows to lava, lava kills monsters.

Another view of the water flows.  Monsters spawn in the dark spawn box above and there are rivers inside the box that suck the monsters to a hole that drops them down into the trap.

New Minecraft Project: Mountain Base

I have been getting busy in Minecraft on our new beta server.  I found an awesome cliff side to hollow out and then I replaced the cliff face with a giant wall of glass.  Here are some pictures I took during the process:

Getting started.

Notice the fenced in area, creeper protection.

The glass wall is in.

Another shot of the glass wall.

A third shot of the glass wall from my neighbors home.

Work area for digging out the inside.

Ladder leads up to the top so I could add a wooden ceiling.

I asked for help digging everything out and this is what I got.

And digging is complete!

View from the outside after digging was completed.  Monster trap to the right.

A sunset as seen from inside the base.

Next on the agenda:

1. Pick a good name for this base.  Any suggestions?
2. Make super secret entrance and remove old boring entrance.
3. Set out to "cool ass rock formation" and build our server's minecart track switching station.  We are building a more manual, switch-based station this go around to avoid the maintenance automated systems require.
4. Fill up all this empty space with a cool multi-level platform (think scaffolding that will be there permanently).
5. Destroy monster trap outisde base and build a new one on top of mountain.  Funnel new trap loot into base.
6. ????
7. Profit!

In The Year 2011, Heartless' Predictions

Read up on my 2010 predictions here.  Keep reading for 2011!

1. World of Warcraft will maintain its dominance.

2. Free 2 Play will continue its march forward and many will consider 2011 the year that F2P becomes the dominant business model not only for MMOGs, but for any online game (MOBA, FPS, etc.)

3. Star Wars: The Old Republic will NOT launch this year.

4. The "next generation" Xbox will be announced by Microsoft. Nintendo and Sony will stay with their current generation.

5. This blog will be completely different and may actually feature commentary and experiences from games I'm actually playing.

PC vs Console... an image

What I bought in the Steam Holiday Sale 2010

Bioshock 2 - $10
Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition - $25 (Includes original, Awakening expansion, and all content packs)
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - $5

The Secret of Monkey Island - $3.75

Total: $43.75
Christmas Cash: $50

Yay, I still have $6.25 left to spend on non-gaming items!  And damn it, how did I miss Puzzle Quest for $1.50!  Anyways, this is how I feel after Steam Sales:

Viet-fucking-nam

Thanks to this post over on Reddit, I just scored a copy of Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam for $5 via the UK EA Store.  The code is redeemable on the US version via Steam.  And after a single game I am convinced it was well worth the $5.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Morning Vieeeeetnaaaaam!

Sorry, no part 2 for Minecraft What I'm doing

Sorry, there will be no part 2 to this post about what I was building in Minecraft.  As the beta approaches for Minecraft, tomorrow actually, my friends and I decided it was time to go all TNT Armageddon on our server.  And, well, my house was first and is now nothing but a giant hole in the ground. 

Normally, a month of hard work lost in a few heartbeats would cause a rage inside me that most have never seen, but with Minecraft things grow stale.  Also survival multiplayer has been updated so much that when I started my project the game was immensely different than when I left off (players NEVER finish anything in Minecraft).  I'm looking forward to starting over with all the awesome knowledge I have now.  This time, I may actually fit my mine cart system in my initial building instead of some sort of Frankenstein building that I was building on the old world!

A new world dawns tomorrow at minecraft.gamesnacks.org.  Come on over and say hi.

First game of League of Legends

Here are the results from my first multi-player match in League of Legends?  I think I did fairly well.  We won the match even though we had one player AFK nearly the entire match.  I played as Ashe, who I am liking (following this guide).

Yes, I am playing League of Legends

NOTE: If you are interested in playing, please sign up via my referral link.

If you've been following my Raptr stream, you may have noticed that I've started playing League of Legends (LoL).  LoL is a strategy game based on the concepts of the Defense of the Ancients (DotA) map from Warcraft III.  Players pick a champion and battle an opposing team and their defense towers, NPC minions, and an NPC filled "jungle".

However, one sentence is not going to describe this game adequately.  It took a 48 minute long video for me to finally grasp the possibilities that lie within this game.  And there is nothing like a crazy British person to introduce you to a game with the acronym LoL:



With the video out of the way, here is my pertinent info:

Ingame name: heartlessgamer

Now, I've only played practice matches up to this point against AI bots. The community from all reports is unforgiving of newb players. The game is designed so that a bad player really hurts a team. A player that repeatedly dies without accomplishing anything is in reality "feeding" the other team and allowing them to increase their power and control of the game.

I suspect that I will be coming out of practice mode soon, because there are some things I won't learn until I am playing the real game. Also, I need to climb the leveling ladder to 30 which will never happen just running practice games. Leveling is a player's learning period, so I need to take it serious instead of just rushing to 30 because a level 30 newb has no excuses as to why they don't understand the game.

Oh and did I mention that the game is completely free to play?  No?  Well it is and most of the extra parts of the game can be unlocked for free as well by just playing.  The items that can be purchased in the cash shop are cosmetic or allow for players to skip past a bit of grinding in game points to unlock the various champions.