Guild Wars 2 Initial Impressions

Guild Wars 2 head started on Friday shortly before midnight.  I was able to log in immediately to the Maguuma server and get started on my Norn thief, Heartless Foe, and my Human ranger, Heartless Gamer.  (Heartless Foe is a throwback to my Warrior/Necro character name from Guild Wars 1).  Guild Wars 2 immediately lives up to many of it's expectations by improving and simplifying many MMO tropes, but at the same time there are some core issues that hold it back.

Upon logging in the first enhancement is immediately visible: overflow servers.  This is the first MMO launch in recent memory where the word "login queue" didn't apply.  Instead, extra players are thrown into an instanced server where they can play and progress waiting to join the main server.  The downside is that right now overflow servers make playing with friends difficult, but to me its a better solution than NOT playing the game while watching a login queue.  Playing will always win the war against NOT playing.

As far as the actual game goes; Guild Wars 2 is a brilliant package.  There is a lot to like, from the excellent world/zone maps, "quest" design, and graphics, to the little things such as the collections tab, waypoint system, and emotes.  Without spending too much time droning on about the nuances, suffice to say that Guild Wars 2 listened and executed well in regards to improving on many little annoyances of MMOs.  Anyone that has experienced MMOs for the past several years will be spoiled by Guild Wars 2's feature list.

However, I can't put Guild Wars 2 on too high of a pedestal as there are some problematic core items that have already started nagging on my brain.  First and foremost is the combat which works somewhat well in small scale, but is a complete clusterfuck once more than five people show up.  Worst of all, it clearly seems to have been designed to be a clusterfuck in certain situations.  In the open World vs World PvP map or large public quests (aka dynamic events), the combat is just unintelligible spam.  With spell effect scaling, players will often find themselves subject to invisible attacks and random death.

Guild Wars 2 relies a lot on reflex and action-based combat.  This works great and lets players showcase their skills in small-scale combat, but again it does not work, AT ALL, in large scale confrontation.  There is literally so many area of affect abilities (and one shot death in PvE) being tossed that the dodge mechanic is completely rendered moot.  And the game was designed to bring clusters of players together in small areas to spam the shit out of these abilities.  It is very troubling to me that so much effort was put into this action combat to have it result in a complete button mashing affair when it should shine the most.  Combat is very difficult to follow because of this.

I want to reiterate that outside of combat, Guild Wars 2 has completely won me over.  The features are really that freaking good.  Advancement paths are varied and traditional MMO quests are all but gone.  Players are always encouraged to play together and never are they penalized for helping each other out (seriously, how the fuck has it taken this long to get an MMO where playing together is NOT a penalty!).  The non-combat heavy players will also find they can successfully thrive and reach max level simply through crafting and exploration.  If you can do it in Guild Wars 2, it probably advances the level track (even resource gathering gives experience!).

Another core area of weakness, which Arena Net keeps holding up, is all the voice acting in personal story quests and dungeons.  Instead of traditional MMO quest text boxes, Guild Wars 2 opts for quasi-cut scenes with voice acting (think Mass Effect 1 dialogue).  The problem is the character models are nearly 100% emotionless while the voice actor puts passion into the lines.  It is terrible.. honestly terrible... and I end up clicking skip the end just to red the blurb that will appear on the map (which again, the map is awesome).

Even with the core weaknesses in combat and the story telling, Guild Wars 2 is certainly a refreshing take in the MMO market.  I would highly recommend anyone who is interested in MMOs to check it out.  If anything, it is certainly one of the few games worth the $60 box price and there is no subscription so it is a game that players can continue to come back to at their leisure.  It also features level-up mechanics to bring lower level characters up to level 80 for the World vs World combat (albeit as a lower level character your stats are lower and options limited).

I expect a good healthy run in Guild Wars 2.  Once I reach level 80 down the line I will certainly be spending a good amount of time learning the WvW map, but at this point I think I am going to have to let the "mists" dissipate a bit as it is not fun currently.  Hopefully the WvW areas will change to encourage smaller group skirmishes (Arena Net should start by removing the invisible walls at the bottleneck leading out of the portal keep).

DotA 2 – What I Dislike

In my previous post I detailed some of the items that I liked about DotA 2 and while the game has slowly changed my outlook on its potential, I still have some hesitations. Some of these are not limited to DotA 2 and are concerns I shared about my time with League of Legends.

Asymmetry

The asymmetrical nature of the hero design in DotA 2, as much as I love the idea of it, rarely works out in public match making. As explained in my previous post, there are heroes that have no business being on the field by themselves, but when combined properly they become a force multiplier which really unbalances a match when not countered. Then there are other heroes, such as Ursa or Lycan, that when played well singlehandedly destroy the other team (often referred to as “pubstomping” heroes).

This leads to one-sided games and the more I play DotA 2 the more I realize the public matchmaking games at my level are terribly lop sided. In fact, I went back over my history of recent games and found only a single game that was competitive. All of the other games were steam rolled by one of the teams and were decided within the first 15 minutes.

I must note that this is actually part of the game design for this genre. It is also what gives these games such high skill caps and great competitive scenes that are quickly taking over eSports. However, I can’t help but feel that it really damages the casual scene and in the case of DotA 2, so far, it seems to be a much bigger issue than other games I have played.

In comparison, in my time with League of Legends, I have certainly seen my fair share of lop sided victories and losses. Yet, I have also been involved in far more competitive matches via public match making than I have in DotA 2. Not nearly as often did I feel like a match was a complete wash and in games that were a wash there was the forfeit vote or the dominating team could easily and quickly push to finish the match which brings me to my next two gripes about DotA 2: the length of matches and the lack of a forfeit feature.

Length of Matches

DotA 2 matches last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, more often than not leaning towards the hour mark. Combined with load times and match making time, I would estimate a player averages one game per hour. This is just too long, especially when considering that many of the matches are pretty much determined by the 15-20 minute mark and the rest of the time is spent just waiting for the towers and base to fall. Unlike League of Legends, DotA 2 does not really have anything that speeds up the inevitable push so to avoid leaver penalties many players end up just AFK in the fountains for 30 minutes waiting for the match to be finished.

Forfeit

DotA 2, by its mere design, should have a way to concede a match. Currently the only safe way out of a match is if someone makes the first move and disconnects, allowing all others to drop out without penalty. After the 15 minute mark, a team should be able to call a vote to concede.

Customization Items

This is a minor complaint, but may in the long run be the biggest problem for DotA 2 with its Free 2 Play business model. The customization items for heroes are not distinguishable and I don’t see how they make someone feel unique. Other than looking good on a player’s profile page, I do not see as nearly as successful a market around customization items as there is in Team Fortress 2 (where the customization items affect game play as well as are clearly distinguishable when playing). This may change as more items are added to DotA 2, but to say that I was less than impressed by what was already out there is a massive understatement.

DotA 2 – What I like

I have put 50 hours into DotA2 now and I am slowly revising my outlook on the game. It will not be as bad off as I predicted. In fact, even in its beta form it has become one of the most played games on Steam. I can’t imagine how big the game will become once it has hit a full on release and anyone with a computer can try it out for free. There are certainly some things to like about DotA2.

Asymmetry

While the DotA map is symmetrical (for the most part), the same cannot be said for the pool of heroes. The 80+ available heroes in DotA2 are varied and unique, with almost none of them working the same. I am a huge fan of asymmetry in game design. Balance is so often forced through symmetry: team A gets uber power 1 so team B gets uber power 1 as well just with a different name and graphic. This is annoying and destroys any chance at something feeling unique within a game. Not the case in DotA 2.

Take for example the support hero Wisp; a shiny ball of energy that has almost zero offensive capabilities, some middling defensive capabilities, and only really excels at supporting a team’s carry. Wisp serves almost no purpose by itself. Now compare Wisp to Phantom Assassin; a hard carry capable of killing enemy players in a single hit and thus is almost single handedly responsible for winning the game. Phantom Assassin can dominate without the help of Wisp. Wisp, when placed against Phantom Assassin, could never win. In a vacuum, those two would be completely broken.

This asymmetry leads to amazing dynamics as neither team can have a copy of the same hero as the other team. Combine Wisp and Phantom Assassin together on the same team and all of a sudden the support + carry combination can easily wreck the other team if the other team failed to pick a counter. And really what the core of DotA2 competitive play comes down to is the counter picking and execution of that counter pick. And at the end of the day, this asymmetry results in a balance in the competitive scene of DotA 2.

To note, this isn’t always the greatest thing and in my next post I will talk a bit about how this is detrimental to the game at times. Even with that in mind, I am still a firm supporter of the asymmetry.

Character

DotA 2 has character and is building in character; from custom announcer packs to the constant quips the heroes give off during the course of a game. I can’t wait for First Blood in every game, hoping it will be a new hero who scores the kill just so I can hear their First Blood quote (for example, Invoker says something to the effect of “First, as I am in all things”). Another example is the hero Gyrocopter who flies around the map in a helicopter-like contraption making helicopter noises with his mouth. It is brilliant. Just as Valve did with Team Fortress 2, they have really cemented the idea of character into DotA2 and with 100+ heroes to eventually have in the game I can only imagine the sort of stuff they will bake in. Now they just need to deliver a “Meet the” video for every hero!

Presentation

I’ve spoken about this before, but DotA2 is as much of an experience as it is a game. The interface and feature set are amazing (without even having everything in the package yet!). Spectating, replays, learning features, etc. DotA2 really strives to deliver the entire package that the MOBA genre seeks.

This Was Predicted

"The game that shall not be named" is going free 2 play.

To quote my predictions for the year:

3. "the game that shall not be named" will have a tough year, but will survive.  The argument to take the game Free 2 Play will begin around July.

Next time, I'm putting money down in Vegas.

DOTA2: Single Draft

I've felt lost lately in DOTA2 playing against heroes that I have never seen in a game before.  At the same time I was getting frustrated playing the same heroes over and over because I felt comfortable with them and ending up with completely different results.  One game I will dominate as Viper and the next one I can't even scratch my laning opponent.  To force myself to expand a bit and help learn about the numerous heroes in DOTA2 I have switched to playing Single Draft mode.  Each player is randomly given a choice of three heroes to choose from (one hero per main attribute type: intelligence, agility, or strength).

Since this change I have played games as Phantom Lancer, Nightstalker, Omniknight, and a few others I have almost never seen in pub games before.  I found myself doing well with some such as Phantom Lancer, but not feeling like I really knew why I was doing well.  That forced me to research the heroes a bit and actually learn something (like how to control illusion minions!). 

Out of all the things I've done in DOTA2, this is easily the change that has resulted in the most knowledge gained on my part.  It has also wisened me up to some intricacies of DOTA2 which I can explore more as I find heroes I enjoy playing.  My end goal is to have at least ten heroes I feel comfortable playing in a pub game, which is about where I was with League of Legends (though in LoL I felt like I could far more easily pick up new heroes).

For anyone playing DOTA2, I highly recommend some time in Single Draft mode to open your opportunities to try and learn other heroes.  Its a surprise each time you load up a game and if you care about team composition, single draft's randomness can land you some wonderful learning opportunities.

NOTE: Yes, I understand this makes some players angry as they don't want "scrubs" using Single Draft as a sort of testing bed.  However, the fact that the picks are random, there is always the chance of a team being shafted.  This makes the match all the more fun in my opinion.

PC Upgrade

My PC died two weeks ago, so its upgrade time:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bJFA/benchmarks/

CPU: AMD FX-6100 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme3 ATX  AM3+ Motherboard  ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($48.99 @ Amazon)
Hard Drive: Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Case: Antec One ATX Mid Tower Case  ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: OCZ 650W ATX12V Power Supply  ($92.65 @ Amazon)
Total: $276.62
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)

Too Many Assumptions: EU Court Ruling Allows for Re-sale of Used Digital Games by End-Users

There is a stir in the online PC gaming community today over a EU court ruling that allows for the resale of digital licenses.  Read up here.  The important part of the ruling is: "Therefore, even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy."  This is big news.  HUGE news for software copyright.  The immediate Internet conclusion is that Steam or any other digital distribution platform for games will have to allow end users to resell their games for profit.  However, its all being taken too far in regards to digital distribution.  This will not and cannot change anything with digital distribution.

I won't claim to be an expert in copyright law, but I do consider myself a logical thinker.  Thinking this out a bit, I don't see anything in the ruling that forces a digital distribution platform to allow another user access to a game license bought by one of its other users.  The license to a game can be transferred to another user, but access via a digital distribution platform is under a completely different license.  The ruling may force the likes of Steam to allow user account sales, but it does not in any way look like it forces Steam to allow a different user access to a license you've resold.  Theoretically, as you no longer own the license, Steam could deactivate your access to the game while the new owner is forced to procure the game files and installation methods independent of Steam.

In fact, it would be like buying a new game from Walmart and then having a law forcing Walmart to resell that game for the purchaser, deliver it to the new owners house, set it up for them and ensure it is in brand new cloned working order, and then provide all the monies to the original purchaser.  It makes zero sense.  Walmart sold you the game and if you resell it, it is up to you to figure out how to get it to the new owner and its then up to the new owner to have a method to use it.

Oh and there is a little United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling (basically then upheld by the Supreme Court) for Vernor v Autodesk in the good ole' US of A which pretty much puts the kibosh on the reselling of software licenses.

Even if we were in fairy-tale land and the resale of used digital games was allowed, I wouldn't want it.  The sale of used physical copies of games already forced developers into the models we currently have.  Downloadable content (DLC) and the piecemeal sale of games is a direct result of developers looking at ways to get around used game sales.  Every developer now is building or has built online service platforms around their game franchises to lock features behind pay walls.

I much prefer the path the PC gaming industry is actually on: free 2 play (F2P).  Players want to pay for games and are more than willing to happily spend away on games that keep them engaged.  The F2P model allows them to try before they buy and then show the developer in a tangible way what they like about the game.

There is so much doom-casting about the current gaming industry that we are all missing the fact that the PC gaming industry has completely transformed itself over the past two years.  Reselling of digital licenses for digital games would be a huge derailment.

Guild Wars 2 Launches 8-28-2012

Rift is World of Warcraft

Rift may be a completely different game than World of Warcraft, but I will never know.  I've played two hours of Rift and had I not seen the title screen, I would have thought I was playing World of Warcraft.  This is the same thought I had while playing Aion.  The same thought that made me shriek in horror when I finally got to play "the game that shall not be named".  It annoys me that so many games have copied World of Warcraft and not just copied ideas, but cloned wholesale everything about World of Warcraft.  It is so bad that the games are all using the same text color to identify different levels of loot.  The font used looks almost exactly the same.  The icon shapes.  On and on and on this goes.

There has been a long running discussion that World of Warcraft just copied Everquest which just copied DIKU MUD and therefore the current flood of WoW clones is expected.  I disagree with this line of thinking.  Everquest's biggest achievement is that it brought the DIKU MUD to 3D graphics.  Other than that, I would argue Everquest was a pretty terrible game.  World of Warcraft's biggest achievement was that it refined the DIKU model into something that made sense with a massively online game that is beyond a doubt one of the best games ever released.  Secondly, WoW brought MMO to the mainstream.

These other games: Rift, Aion, etc. They are all clones; none of them bringing anything significant to the genre.  They aren't even trying to bring something to the genre.  They are all fighting to carve out a piece of the table scraps of players that Blizzard ends up shoving off the table where they keep the money hats.

Does this make these games bad?  Not really, but after an hour of playing Aion I was done; having decided if I wanted this experience I would just go back to play World of Warcraft.  Rift?  Same story.

Yet, the worst part is each and every game tries to sell itself as though its the "next big thing".  That its ONE THING IT WILL DO DIFFERENTLY is the NEXT PILLAR OF WHAT IS GOOD IN GAMES.  It's annoying.  These developer's need to just shut up and tell gamers that they really liked World of Warcraft and wanted to make a game that emulates it.  I would be far less pissed off about the state of the MMO industry if the big players would just come out and admit they are riding WoW's coattails

Rift is World of Warcraft.  I don't care if the game gets better in the later levels or has some whiz-bang new idea that you get to enjoy at some point.  Give me something different that as soon as I start playing the LAST thing I think of is the other game I played before it.  When I played DOTA 2, I didn't think "oh man, this is League of Legends".  DOTA 2 is it's own game.  It defines itself as something unique.  AND DOTA 2 IS A LITERAL CLONE OF ANOTHER GAME!

Fuck it, Valve make me a god damned MMO already.

Silent on Guild Wars 2

A week doesn't seem to go by without someone buzzing me and asking why I'm so silent on Guild Wars 2.  Some have gone as far as to scream in my general direction that "IT IS EVERYTHING WARHAMMER ONLINE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE!!!".  To be honest, and to admit this for the first time publicly, I'm still a little butt hurt over Warhammer Online and it's epic shortcomings.  I've sworn off caring about big-name MMOs until I get my hands on them and the NDAs have dropped.  With that said, I do agree that GW2 is shaping up to be what Warhammer Online should have been, but with so much more going for it.

While I don't believe I ever blindly bought into the hype of Warhammer Online, I am certainly a victim of foolishly believing the game was more finished than it turned out to be.  I still maintain to this day that Warhammer Online put all the pieces together for a great MMO, but forgot to add the glue and nails that would keep it all together.  Band aids could only hold that sinking ship together for so long (surprisingly it's still not Free 2 Play).

Warhammer's failures put GW2's features into perspective.  Simple things such as allowing instant access to end-game PvP zones, PvE content in the PvP zones, and having PvP objectives outside of just killing other players would not mean as much (to me) had it not been for Warhammer Online's complete opposites.  Warhammer Online allows me to smile a little bit inside every time I watch or read a new bit of information about GW2.

Another small area of pleasure is looking at GW2's World vs World (WvW), most directly comparable to Realm vs Realm from Warhammer Online. Unlike Warhammer Online; GW2 took an interesting path to get to its WvW system.  Instead of distinct races/areas dividing the "teams", GW2 simply pits server against server. Each server has the exact same world, characters, and classes that the other servers have.  This instantly strikes a balance and the conflict comes down to numbers and grand strategy to decide the victors.  Throw in a bit of match making to re-balance equally skilled servers together and the forumla looks solid.

Matter of fact, GW2 looks solid as a whole (even in it's beta stage).  And this is why I am silent.  This is why I've stopped clawing to watch every new video or story that is released. I have yet to even pre-order the game. I want as much of GW2 to be fresh to me as possible.  Hopefully that will limit the butt hurt this time around on another promising MMO.